


2 Winterhawk 2 Kisses

by Nny



Series: Winterhawk Kisses [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Aquarium, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - Police, Anxiety, Crossover, High School, Home Improvement, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Pillow & Blanket Forts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2018-11-15 16:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 150
Words: 54,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11235024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: The number of fics was getting a little unwieldy so I've decided to add a new installment.Tumblr ficlets with a Winterhawk bent, some but not all of which involve kisses.Updated weekly.Installment now complete. More kisses in the next collection!





	1. Chapter 1

“I’m grateful,” Steve said, awkwardly, “it was an incredibly generous donation.” it had kinda had to be. Steve, ex-military, current Mr May in the firefighters’ annual charity character, had definitely been the hot ticket at the bachelor auction. Mostly Clint had seen the look of faint panic on his face and bid to save him an awkward dinner with one of the terrifying actual rich people who’d been hovering. 

“Compensation. Kinda got hit by a bus,” Clint said, going to rub the back of his neck and almost braining himself with his cast. “I, er, kinda got hit by a bus a _lot_. There was this dog -”

The guy hovering nearby, the one who’d been looking steadily more and more homicidal as Steve was pawed by people ‘checking out the merchandise’, snorted under his breath. Clint figured boyfriend? Probably boyfriend. They went well together, a study in contrasts - Steve was blond haired blue eyed summer, his guy was monochromatic winter, dark hair and grey eyes and ice in his expression. He was more Clint’s type, actually, looked like trouble with the goddamn capslock on, but Clint wasn’t tacky enough to eye up the boyfriend of the guy he’d just bought. 

“So we should - make a date, I guess?” Steve said, and then his eyes drifted over to some kinda disturbance across the room, and all the color leeched out of his face. 

The new guy was - Clint was feeling ridiculously out of his league, right now. He was in a tailored tux, which was a level of fancy that Clint couldn’t quite _get_. He had a kind of elegantly rumpled air about him but his facial hair was trimmed to perfection, like he had his own personal barber on call at all times. If it wasn’t for the look of anxious hope on his face - 

“Steve,” he said, relieved and breathless and a little bit wrecked. 

“Tony,” Steve said, low, and Clint could practically see boyfriend’s hackles rise. ‘cos Clint wasn’t exactly a people person, but even he could hear that Steve’s casual tone was just spackle over bone deep cracks. 

“You,” Tony said, “biceps.” 

It took Clint a second to realise - “Wait, me?” Tony nodded impatiently without even looking at him, apparently lost completely in Steve’s sky blue eyes. 

“I’ll give you a check, okay. I’ll give the charity a check. I will create a whole charitable foundation in your name if you’ll let me - I had to see you again.” He was talking to Steve now, low and urgent and like the climax of some romantic film. “I know you said - but I couldn’t -”

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve said, and he sounded freaking _agonised_ , and Clint shuffled backwards, feeling awkward, not so much wanting to see the look on boyfriend’s face. Instead he made his way over to the harrassed looking kid in charge of the donations to hand over his details; Tony could do what he liked with his cash, but Clint’d already decided on donating most of what he’d got, and he wasn’t letting some kinda Love Actually situation get in his way. Then, feeling a little accomplished, a little relieved - there was no way he’d’ve got through dinner without making a comment about the hotness of Steve’s guy - Clint stuck his hands in his pockets and sauntered over to the bar.

He installed himself in a booth when he’d got his beer, turning it around on the table top and watching parts of a hockey match around the edge of a pillar. Against his will he got a little caught up in trying to work out what was going on in the bits of screen he couldn’t see, and he almost jumped out of his skin when a low voice spoke. 

“Hey. Mind if I sit?” 

He wasn’t expecting boyfriend, and it upset all the boxes of butterflies he’d just managed to get under control. Clint made an inviting type of gesture and boyfriend slid in across from him, looking - surprisingly okay for someone who’s just witnessed the kinda reunion for which Oscars are won. 

“Hey,” boyfriend said, “I’m Bucky.” 

“Clint,” he answered automatically. “Which - obviously you know.” 

“I’m sorry about the whole -” Bucky waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the lobby; Clint figured he wasn’t talking about the appalling color scheme. 

“No, man, I’m sorry about your guy,” Clint said. Bucky’s face fell, screwed up a little, and Clint poked at his beer. “I mean, he wasn’t so much my type, but you guys looked -”

“We’re not,” Bucky said flatly. 

“What?”

“I’m - we’re friends.” 

“Huh,” said Clint. The protective thing looked a little different from this angle. Clint kinda liked it. “Friends, huh?”

Bucky grinned a little, leaned forward across the table, lowering his voice to conspiratorial, almost tactile, nearly shivering down Clint’s spine.

“So,” he said, with a wicked smile. “Tell me more about your type.”


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky’s teetering over into okay, and he’s not sure what to do about that, how to feel. There are still nightmares - he’s pretty sure there will always be nightmares - but they don’t steal days any more. Maybe a little of that is waking up in Clint’s arms.

It’d been a slow sort of progress. He noticed - he’s traumatised, not dead - but didn’t think to act on it, didn’t want for more than sarcastic comments and how they found all the laughter he thought had left him, brought it out into the open. But it developed, matured, flourished with proximity. Bucky found himself fighting hardest against the voices in Clint’s head that told him he wasn’t worth shit, found himself with more and more foundations from which to mount a defence. And eventually they weren’t defences, just truths, murmured closer and closer until lips were pressed against skin.

And now he’s turned into the kind of person who can wake up without screaming. The kind of person where a sunny day with a gentle breeze can be all he needs to set him up okay.

Bucky shifts a little on the gravel of the rooftop, leans back against Clint’s chest and laughs softly at the sleep rhythm of his breath against the side of Bucky’s neck.

He feels like a new man.


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky wakes up at 2am to Clint climbing heavily into his bed. He knows it’s Clint ‘cos there’s no one else with those particular callouses - and it’d be a lot easier a life if he hadn’t fuckin’ memorised them - and because he smells like Cheetos and beer. 

Clint’s slept in his bed before. Once with a concussion of the sort that meant you had to be woken up every hour on the hour, and everyone else in the damn tower had had to go avenge the concussion. Once when they’d been watching Spongebob Squarepants until the sun was practically coming up, and Clint was warm and the tower was cold, and the sugar high made it seem like the best possible option. Once when Clint couldn’t stop dream about killing, about blue, and Bucky had talked him down and talked him lower and talked him into a tentative sleep, and the sore throat had been worth it for the gentle breathing weight in his arms. 

Clint’s never climbed into his bed before, though. He’s never slept here like this. 

“Hey Clint,” Bucky says, a little tentative, a little confused. 

“Hey,” Clint says. “Hey Bucky, hey.” 

It makes Bucky grin, and there’s still not much that does that. 

“You okay, pal?” he says, and Clint collapses sloppily into the crook of his neck and grins there, warm and damp. 

“Can’t wait to marry you,” Clint mumbles, and Bucky stiffens, certain and dreading and knowing he’s heard that wrong. 

“What?” he says. 

“M’gonna,” Clint yawns. 

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, and he can feel the smile growing on his face but that doesn’t mean he has to admit to it. 

“Yeah,” Clint says. “‘son my to do list.” 


	4. Chapter 4

Clint grunts softly over comms, barely audible, and Bucky takes off running. 

“Bucky?” Steve yells; his shield flies back to him and he lets the momentum spin him, staring after Bucky like a lost kid. Bucky ignores him. Natasha’s nearby, Tony’s on high, no one’s gonna die without him. 

No. Someone. Someone might die without him. 

Clint requested anaesthetic, once, when Bruce was using a needle to get at a splinter. Clint whined for hours one time about stubbing his little toe. Clint decided he couldn’t do anything except sprawl across Bucky and watch cartoons that time he had a bruise the size of a dime on the inside of his thigh.

Once things’re safe, once he’s satisfied he doesn’t have to go save anyone’s ass, Clint will bitch and moan and exaggerate a limp - and the second one of the team is in danger he will fight his way off a damn hospital bed to get them safe. 

“Buck?” Clint says, and his voice is a little strained but not so you’d notice. “Fight’s that-a-way.” 

Bucky doesn’t have the breath to reply, crashing through the door of the building and running for the stairs, pushing every muscle until he’s burning all over. 

“Good shot,” Tony says dryly. 

Steve’s crisp voice, “Hawkeye, are you -” is cut off by Natasha, sharp, scared. 

“ _Clint?_ ”

Bucky shoves through the roof access and pounds across the rooftop, and Clint’s giving it his best fucking shot - because every shot’s his best fucking shot, that’s Clint, that’s who he _is_ \- but he can barely stay upright any more, his grip on his bow failing and his side slick with blood. 

“Hey,” he says, when Bucky reaches him, and he crashes down onto his knees, placing his bow carefully on the floor with shaking hands. “Sorry.” 

“Fuck you,” Bucky says, and presses the quickest possible off-center kiss to his wryly upturned lips, heaves him upright and over his shoulder and across the rooftop and down the stairs almost without breathing. (Clint’s still breathing. Clint’s biting back groans with every step, and Bucky hates every tiny almost-hidden noise.)

Bruce is in the ‘jet and does what he can with the supplies they have. Clint’s terrifyingly pale and still, and Bucky should return to the fight but it sounds like it’s wrapping up and he can’t _move_. 

“I’m, um,” Bruce says, pushing his glasses up and leaving a bloody fingerprint on the lens, “he’ll be fine, I’m fairly sure. The response time was excellent, so he’ll -”

He’s interrupted by the team pouring in from outside, and in the chaos Clint’s eyes open, fuzzy for a moment or two but then visibly flickering round in an efficient visual check of their status. Then he catches Bucky’s eye and his mouth tip-tilts up into the tiniest of grins. 

“Fuckin’ _ow_ ,” he says.


	5. Chapter 5

The Soldier heaves in a breath, lets it out in a rush of exasperation and honesty.

“He keeps touching me,” he says, and Clint cocks his head to one side. The Soldier glowers at the metal fist his arm has made apparently involuntarily. “He keeps acting like I’m -”

“Bucky,” Clint says, and the Soldier’s scowl deepens. 

“I’m not Bucky,” he says, and Clint shrugs. 

“Well sure,” he says. “Bucky died.” 

“I don’t want people to touch me,” the Soldier says, and then moves his hand quickly, outstretched, palm down, hovering close. “But I don’t want you to leave.” He makes it sound… begrudging. He doesn’t mean to make it sound desperate, but it does.

“Okay,” Clint says. “So Mario Kart.”

They go through three freaking Wiis before the Soldier gets the hang of it. Another six once they unlock Rainbow Road. It’s fine, Tony can afford it, and Clint is enjoying himself immensely. Also learning more Russian swearwords - and, more recently, ‘30s slang - than he will likely ever need.

Bucky always plays as Luigi (”He’s the sidekick, right?”) where Clint’s a fan of Princess Peach. Thor joined them once and played as Toad, and all that could be heard was Toad’s wobbly shrieking as one or other of them ran him off the road. ‘cos against each other they’re a storm of swearing and - eventually, slowly, carefully introduced - shoving, but working together they’re a freaking force of nature.

And Clint refuses to read into that. He can’t.

The Soldier is attending therapy sessions, obviously, and that’s maybe the only time he leaves the sanctity of the Avengers’ living quarters, and Clint kinda hates those times because he has slightly forgotten how to talk to anyone else. But there’s progress there, at least; the Soldier edits his Mii one evening, giving it shorter hair and carefully typing in ‘James’.

“Your old you ain’t better,” Clint says, not meaning to be discouraging but needing to say - “just different.” 

“And Bucky is dead,” the Soldier says, and there’s no anger, no pain, no loss, just consideration. “I think James could be real, though.”

It makes sense. It’s a part of him but not one that ever really grew into a personality; it’s a name he can take but common enough not to be taking it from a dead man.

“Can I call you James?” Clint asks, navigating carefully around the falling stones of the castle and keeping his eyes determinedly on the screen. 

“I’d like that,” James says, a little soft, a little uncertain, and it’s worth crashing into lava to catch a sideways look at the smile on his face.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuation of chapter 3

Clint wakes up, heavy headed and dry-mouthed, his face buried in someone’s long hair. There’s an instant of hope that it’s someone he’s picked up, that he’s in Bed-Stuy, that he hadn’t really stumbled his way into - 

 _Fuck._  

His instant, desperate reaction is to want to roll out of bed, leave a lot quieter than he came, to pretend with everything he is that this never happened, that he fucked nothing up. He gets a brief flash of Bucky’s sleepy, confused face, and just prays to hell and all its circles that he didn’t fucking _speak_. 

He’d be out of the door right now if he could move, is the thing. He feels a little like he’s on board a ship, and he carefully rolls onto his back and circles his palm over his belly like that’ll do anything to cut down on the nausea. There’s a heavy breath in response to his movement, Bucky arching his back a little, and it’s worth tipping his head and the dizzy that brings to watch the muscles in his back move. 

“Sorry,” Clint says, grates out, a tiny hint of a groan on the end of it ‘cos his soul hurts. 

Bucky rolls over, and Bucky Barnes shirtless is a hell of a lot to deal with at this time in the morning. Clint closes his eyes and rests his palm over them. There’s a shift in weight on the mattress and then the barest touch of cool metal against the edge of his jaw. 

“Not sure I’m ready for marriage, Barton,” he says, and there’s a moment of startling confusion before memories come back, misty and awful, and Clint sucks in a breath and bites down hard on his lip, the rush of saliva in his mouth swallowed down ruthlessly. He will not show weakness right now. He will _not_  throw up. And if it kills him he will not give in to the prickling warmth hidden safely under his hand, ‘cos emotional vulnerability comes along with hangovers and memories of being a big-mouthed dick. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry about that. I’ll be outta your hair in - just gimme a minute.” 

“You’re good,” Bucky says, and his voice is casual and a little amused, and Clint really does not know how to deal with this situation at all. 

“I’m good?” he says. 

A gentle brush of dry lips against his forehead, and then a rush of breath against the side of his neck. 

“Put me on the to-do list, Barton,” Bucky says, and bites down gently on his ear. 


	7. Chapter 7

The Avengers, they ain’t exactly a tactile bunch save for Clint, but it doesn’t occur to Bucky for a while to wonder if Clint is weird with him. 

Something about him seems touch starved. He’s a snuggler, whether that’s with people or down inside an oversized sweatshirt; he doesn’t let his limbs hang out, always tangled up close and tucked in. 

First touch is tentative, every time. Like sounding. Checking the mood before he abandons all fuckin’ conceptions of personal space on the second touch. A brush of fingers, a pause, then his entire freakin’ weight landing in your lap. He’s like a six year old - he’s like someone who never got to be a six year old. 

He seems to favor Bucky, though. And Bucky - Bucky doesn’t think he’s exactly making a secret of how he feels about Barton. He’s always been a flirt but in this he’s freakin’ shameless, and Clint basically curling up in his lap is something like torture - until it flips over into something that ain’t. 

Barton slides into the gap Bucky’s left for him, one leg stretched along the back of the couch and the other foot on the floor. And he leans back, sure, but he also takes Bucky’s hands and folds them over his stomach, patting them once he’s got them situated exactly to his liking. And this ain’t buddies. He and Steve’ll hug, and sometimes Natalia will lean, and Thor’s always good for a clasped forearm and a drinking session, but Clint - 

Bucky, thoughtful, lets his fingers move a little over Clint’s sweater. Idle stroking, at first, that sets Clint back heavier against him, his breathing a little more shallow. He ducks his head in a little closer, like he’s just tryin’ to get more comfortable, and there’s the slightest stretch of Clint’s neck, a tip-tilted invitation that Bucky nuzzles the barest amount into. 

Feeling daring, feeling like his heart is completely outta place, Bucky gently slides one of his hands under the hem of Clint’s sweatshirt, spreads it wide over the thin barrier of his shirt. Clint arches a little, involuntary, and his ass pushes back just the slightest between Bucky’s legs. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky hisses, soft and breathless and for Clint’s ears only, and then he reaches his free hand up and turns Clint’s jaw, uncomfortable and implacable and into a lopsided, perfect kiss. 


	8. Chapter 8

Clint jams the heels of his palms into his eyes. They’re burning, aching, straining against the darkness, and he feels kinda like crying but finds himself laughing instead, helpless hopeless giggles bubbling out of him. ‘Cos who needs sleep, right?

Another yawn rips through him, cracking his jaw. He feels more of a wreck than he has after missions, every bone of him aching, and his heart is still pounding from his latest sleep attempt. Eventually he just gives up, rolls to his feet, walks to the kitchen in a cloud of grey fog.

And the siren call of coffee is pretty fuckin’ strong, but Bucky is on the couch and the tv’s whispering infomercials into the darkness and fuck if that ain’t exactly how he feels.

“Hey,” he croaks, and Bucky tips his head back to look at him, then pats his lap like daytime boundaries ain’t even a thing. Clint vaults over the back of the couch and lands awkward, ungainly, wriggling down until he can rest his head on Bucky’s lap. Just bros being bros, just bros tangling their metal fingers in their bro’s sweat-soaked hair, just bros burying their face in their bro’s hard thigh 'cos it’s the only place they really manage to feel safe.

Some day he’s gonna give in, there’s an inevitability to it, but he’s pretty sure the reaction won’t be good so he’s holding off. But it’s h- it’s tough, it’s fucking difficult, when Bucky cups darkness over his eyes, tells him to sleep, tells him he’s got him, tells him he’ll be right here.


	9. Chapter 9

There’s an elaborate construction in the living room when Bucky goes in.

The teeth of his key are still shiny and new, and he still usually gives a courtesy knock, but it’s been a long three days, with him being interviewed with Natalia and the WSC, and Clint at a corporate retreat of all fuckin’ things. He’s been training little baby SHIELD agents - ‘cos that’s pretty much all they have left - to make their own weapons and survive in the woods, and Bucky has honestly half been expecting a phone call, an alert, something apocalyptic. At least a broken limb, Clint falling out of a tree, _something_. He does such a good impression of incompetence sometimes that it’s kind of a jolt to remember that he’s a skilled agent, that he’s lethal, that when you take a second to look past the band-aids he’s also hot as all hell. Not that Bucky’s been thinking about starry eyed recruits, nights under the stars, shared cans of mosquito spray…

Okay. Tangent. Fuck.

There’s an elaborate construction in the living room when Bucky goes in. One end looks like it started out as a pillow fort but swiftly ran out of blankets. There’s a tarp pinned to the kitchen counter with a couple arrows, a bungee cord over the stair rail that’s holding up a corner improbably woven out of clothes, a baseball bat held up with stacks of frozen bruise-peas to hold open the entrance.

(Clint has a whole drawer in his freezer for bruise-peas, cos he says he got used to them young and doesn’t like how ice packs feel. It’s the kinda little snippet that Clint lets out sometimes that makes you roll your eyes and then, when it sinks in a little further, want to fuckin’ burn something to the ground.)

There’s a jingle of dog tags from somewhere inside the structure and then Lucky races out from inside, knocking down the baseball bat door jamb and rearing up against Bucky, his tail wreaking havoc with the blanket roof.

“Aw hell,” a voice says. “Bucky? Nat? Little help?”

(Bucky can’t think too hard about the fact that he’s one of only two people trusted with a key. They’re friends, and he’s grateful that they’re friends, and that’s where the train of thought has gotta run out of steam.)

“The hell are you up to?” Bucky says, and he can hear the stupid damn smile in Clint’s voice.

“Buck! You’re back!”

“I texted you all of ten minutes ago,” he says, and the blanket fort projects an air of sheepish.

“Yeah, my phone’s in a tree somewhere. Squirrel attack.”

Bucky shakes his head and ducks down to greet Lucky, scratching behind his ears before pushing him aside so he can attempt to recreate the entrance to this thing.

“You’re kind of an idiot, Barton,” he says, and Clint - somewhere under blankets and tarpaulin and at least three of Bucky’s sweaters - starts laughing.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

Bucky crawls inside the rickety entrance he’s made. It’s darker than he’d’ve thought, warm and close and a little musty. Clint’s tucked up against the couch-wall with his knees pulled up to his chest, and his eyes gleam in the dimness.

“So tell me,” Bucky says. He tries to arrange himself next to Clint but the ceiling’s pitched oddly and he’s got to get right in close, an awkwardness of limbs in the darkness that somehow ends up with Clint’s fingers folded around his and not letting go.

“Okay,” Clint says, “story time.”

Bucky takes a breath, clint-scented air, and adjusts their hands so they’re entangled more securely. If he has his way, he’s never lettin’ go.


	10. Chapter 10

Being vulnerable with someone is a fuckin’ trip.

It’s like saying - here is the key to all the doors I keep locked. Here’s a map of all the things that haven’t stopped hurting. Here’s a weapon, perfectly weighted, perfectly calibrated, and I’m trusting you not to kill me.

Bucky doesn’t do vulnerable easily. Rarely does vulnerable at all. The life he’s had, it’s armour accreted around him, bulletproof layers of lead-lined skin. And that’s fine so long as the only access route is through a goddamn super soldier, ‘cos Steve’s his Achilles heel and Steve’s practically indestructible.

Clint’s a different creature. Clint hands over the maps and the keys and the armoury as soon as smile at you, scored tabletops and smashed plates and still opening his heart like a home. It’s a fixer-upper but Bucky’s finding he’s willing to put in the work, maybe lend some of his bulletproof to prop up the crumbling walls.

“Hey, get my ears?” Clint asks him one night, a whole jangling goddamn key ring of trust, and Bucky pauses and cups a hand that could kill him around one cheek.

“Hey,” he says, “I love you,” opening the fortress of his mouth and letting slip a key.


	11. Chapter 11

Bucky’s hand is fast, unforgiving, just shades the right side of too tight and Clint can’t pull in enough air, gasping almost silently, feeling like he’s gonna die from it.

“Ah fuck,” he breathes, “fuck me, _fuck_ me,” and Bucky’s hand loses rhythm a second and Clint flinches from it, ‘cos that’s not what this is. Bucky Barnes has got him some '30s sensibilities, and lending a hand is okay but nothing too queer. Clint has been _dreaming_  about dropping to his knees, about his fingers, about sappier things he’d never admit to in a million years.

Rhythm picks up again, brutal, relentless, and it’s too much, it’s too much, Clint can’t fucking -

He arches his back on an explosive exhale, nothing so loud it’d be heard outside the two of them, hips jerking helplessly as he spends all over Bucky’s hand.

“Gimme,” he pants out, “gimme a second, I’ll -”

Bucky presses his face into the crook of his neck the way he does, 'cos for all his time in foxholes, in war, man can’t keep his damn mouth shut. Clint assumes he’s not waiting, reaching down, but he’s diverted when Bucky’s mouth trails up is neck, breath hot and wet and uneven against his jaw.

He stills. He presses his head back against the rough brick of the alley wall and tries not to breathe too hard in case something breaks this moment. Breaks this moment of Bucky’s lips resting on the skin just to the left of his mouth, breathing like he’s gonna die there.

“Clint.” Barely a word, just a dry-mouthed click, and then Bucky’s lips are against his, clumsy and a little uncertain and every fucking thing he’s been dreaming of.


	12. Chapter 12

“I’d say I can explain, but I’m pretty sure that’d be a lie.”

Bucky took a second, just to breathe, then swung his other leg across the window sill. Clint was standing with his hands spread a little from his sides, automatic defensive mode, his head ducked down submissively. In the corner Lucky was curled up with something (currently) small and sharp-toothed and fluffy, something that was emphatically not a dog.

“So when Steve said alien,” Bucky said, slowly, “when Steve said ‘gone missing from SHIELD’,” Clint was nodding along, chewing on his lip all awkwardly adorable, “when Steve said _potentially lethal_ \- ”

“Aw, no!” Clint said, head coming up protectively. “No, he’s not lethal, he’s just - he’s a little crabby.”

“How many band-aids since this morning, Clint?”

He snorted dismissively. “Like, seven. At most. And one of the smallest gauze patches.”

Bucky strode over to him and Clint submitted to the examination, grouching under his breath but still winding up leaning against Bucky’s chest as he ruffled his fingers through Clint’s hair, half looking for dried blood and half just for the contact. Ended like it always did, Bucky wrapping his arms around Clint’s shoulders and swaying back and forth a little.

“Okay,” he said, without waiting for Clint to ask, “we can keep it. Until it outgrows a dog bed.” Clint knocked his forehead against Bucky’s jaw, mouth curving against his neck. Bucky sighed. “You’re sure it’s not gonna kill us both?”

“Promise,” Clint said. “I confiscated its guns.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Yes, it's Stitch)


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the mob boss AU

It’d been three months since he’d seen Clint. He looked a little thinner, maybe. Tired. Still just about broke Bucky’s heart to look at him. They walked side by side through the industrial area, grey concrete and matching metal doors. 

“Sorry for dragging you out of your way,” Clint said, breaking the silence that was easier than it had any right to be. 

“Anything for you,” Bucky said, and the flippant got a little lost in translation. 

Clint looked away, rubbed the back of his neck, awkward and uncomfortable and still so fucking familiar that it _hurt_. It was a relief to finally hit the right door, to fumble out his key and push inside. 

The locker was full of all sorts of shit he’d picked up over the years. It wasn’t a place to impress, didn’t have the antiques or the valuables, it was more like a junk shop. Bits and pieces that’d caught his eye over the years, that he wanted to keep safe, that he wanted to _keep_. Near the door was a cardboard box, carefully taped closed and labelled ‘Clint’.

“You don’t even wonder why I need this kinda stash?” Bucky’s voice was a little harsh, a challenge that came from the part that felt scrubbed raw, peeled back, felt Clint’s mere presence like sandpaper against his nerves. 

Clint rubbed a hand across his face, letting out a long breath once he was done. 

“Buck,” he said. “I know who you are.” He shrugged, jerked his head in an awkward movement. “Avenger.” 

Bucky barked out a laugh. “And you came anyway?”

Clint shrugged. “I knew you wouldn’t hurt me. Trust was never the problem.” 

That was - too much. Bucky turned away, poked at a rug that he didn’t remember buying, much less stashing in here. The movement unbalanced it, tilted it towards the floor, where it hit with an unnaturally heavy thump. From the look on his face, Bucky could tell Clint knew what that meant, had identified the dark stains, knew exactly what was in there. 

The words all stumbled over each other in their rush to get out first. _I’m sorry_  and _I didn’t -_ and _I swear, Clint, this wasn’t me._  

“Fuck,” Clint said, before any of them could make their way out. “Who’ve you pissed off lately?” 

Bucky blinked. “What?”

Clint gestured to the dead guy on the floor, remarkably casually considering. 

“Well someone’s tryin’ to stitch you up, right?”

“Fuck, _Clint_ ,” Bucky breathed, and it was fucking appalling etiquette, it was probably the biggest mistake he’d ever make, but he couldn’t help but step forward anyway, couldn’t help but push into a kiss.  


	14. Chapter 14

“Fight me, you attractive stranger!”

“Steve?” Bucky says, a little hopelessly; his partner’s over by the bar, notebook flipped open and completely disregarded as he blushes at the bartender with the gorgeous gap-toothed smile. 

The guy swaying a little in front of him has a pretty great grin himself. He’s got a black eye coming up, sticking plaster across the bridge of his nose, and his fists are raised and loosely clenched. He kinda looks like he could take Bucky, which is rare, but only if someone drip-fed him caffeine first. 

“Sir,” Bucky says, which never comes out sounding as genuine as Stevie manages, “I think you need to sit down.” 

“Make me,” he says, and grins again, beckoning like he’s in the damn Matrix. A woman in a nearby booth kicks her heels off the table and gets smoothly to her feet, coming over to push the guy’s fists down and scrubbing a hand affectionately through his hair. Bucky scowls at her. 

“Being arrested after a bar fight will go down no better than the real story,” she tells him. “Besides which, you suck at lying.” 

“Fuck you I’m great at everything,” he says, and then giggles a little, staggering sideways to lean - annoyingly attractively, considering the state of him - against the corner of the booth. 

“You are great at one thing, Clint,” the woman says. “Perhaps two, on a good day.” 

“I’m _amazing_ ,” he protests. “It’s right there in the name.”

“The amazing Clint?” Bucky asks, arching a sceptical eyebrow. 

“The amazing Hawkguy.” Clint says, then frowns. “No, wait. Eye.” 

“You?”

“Me,” Clint says. It’s a little easier to mistake him for sober, leaning the way he is, stable against the wall of the booth and giving Bucky a lingering look. He’s got a surprisingly sharp look, for someone who can barely stand up straight. “I’d like to report a crime, officer.” 

“Yeah?”

“You’ve stolen my -” 

He’s cut off by his friend smacking the back of his head, and she rolls her eyes at Bucky. 

“That is not one of the two things,” she says. “Now come, Clint. Let’s go tell Katie-Kate about the kitten -”

“I rescued,” Clint says, eyes flicking to Bucky, a pleading kinda look on his face. 

“ - that chased you out of a tree.” 

Bucky snorts, mouth curving up in a smile, and Clint - who’d been almost steady for a moment there - walks into a chair. 

“Aaw, chair,” he says, and looks so endearingly betrayed that Bucky scribbles something down, tears the page out of his notebook. He hands it to Clint’s friend, as the safer - or at least, more sober - option. 

“In case he wants to press charges,” he says, feeling his cheeks flushing under her amused regard. “For the theft.” 


	15. Chapter 15

Sometimes - usually when he’s sitting alone in a dark room, somewhere with the TV muttering quietly in the background - Clint is not horribly aware that he is fucking up. The circumstances have got to be pretty specific: no to-do list, no external expectations, no unanswered texts, no paperwork due. He’s gotta have his ears in so he can hear his phone if it rings, and he’s got to not quite remember it’s on silent so he doesn’t have to. If he’s doing something borderline useful at the same time - inventory on arrows, grocery shopping online - he can almost ( _almost_ ) relax guilt-free. 

The rest of life, it’s a low-grade sick-feeling in his stomach, the knowledge that everything he’s doing is probably not good enough, where it’s not completely wrong. When he _actually_ fucks up, when it’s _tangible_ , it’s actually kinda comforting, even when his stomach is churning ‘cos of Steve’s disappointed looks. At least he knows, trusts, the ground that he’s standing on; praise always feels kinda like lies. 

The only exception, the one thing, is his bow. It’s his own kinda zen. He’s the best at it, and he knows this, and maybe that’s a little why the paleolithic weapon with the wood and the string. ‘cos who’s gonna be trying to compete? He pulls back the string, muscles straining, mind completely focused, and he feels the perfection of peace. 

(Of all the worst fucking things about Loki, the ice blue perfect peace hurt the most.)

So of course he spent a fair few weeks avoiding Bucky, especially when Bucky remembered who Bucky was. Especially when he started smiling his crooked sideways smile, when he shouted laughing insults at Steve, ‘cos his face set Clint’s stomach to stumbling worse than usual and there was no way that any word would be right. 

Except sometimes, sometimes there’d be the dark room, and the TV muttering, and Clint wouldn’t be alone when he was answering unimportant emails, or grammar checking Wanda’s reports. Sometimes there’d be another pair of eyes gleaming in the barest TV light, and there wasn’t anything for Clint to fuck up besides being present, and that was something he could always do. First time he spoke to him Clint froze immediately after, but the language of mocking infomercials was universal, and Bucky’s dry humor did a good job of matching his. 

It was easier after that. Things settled back into the usual routine of vague existential dread. Bucky was like Natasha - he slapped Clint upside the head when he fucked up, and never told him he was doing a good job but thanked him for the one he was doing, which was comforting and exactly as much as Clint could deal with. He almost let the fear go enough that he could forget what Bucky’s smiles did to his insides, but every now and again he’d look up and it’d feel like he was falling. He’d always assumed people pictured the falling part of in love like it was a plummet into pillows; to him it felt like a parachute-less drop. But hell, he’d survived those before. 

Bucky edged nearer, on the nights when the dreams wouldn’t stop. Close enough that Clint’s usefulness could be his hand in Bucky’s hair, untangling and easing and soothing him into something like sleep. It felt like something he was doing right, finally, and he’d almost forgotten about fucking up on the night Bucky sat down close to him, breathed out hard against his neck. 

“You scare the shit out of me, Barton,” he said, soft against his skin, and it made Clint laugh enough that there was no time for fear, just the stomach-swooping dip of adrenaline as Bucky pressed their mouths together, a moment’s perfection of nothing like peace. 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mob boss AU again

“Just - just fuck off. I mean it.” 

Clint didn’t even sound angry any more, he just sounded sad, tired, worn down, and it was so much worse. Bucky leaned back against the kitchen counter and let his feet skid across the laminate floor, slid down until he was sitting. His suit probably cost more than this fucking apartment. The car outside certainly did, the one that barely fit the two guys in the back seat with their matching suits and earpieces and shoulder holsters. 

“I wish you didn’t,” Bucky said. 

“Yeah, well, if wishes were horses -”

“Promise not to offer to buy you any more ponies,” he offered, and Clint’s mouth hitched up a little. 

“Forget it,” he said. “You fucking suck.” 

“Thought that was one of the things you liked best about me,” Bucky said, tipped his head back against scarred wood and tried to ignore the burning in his eyes. “Can you just - forget I even fucking asked?”

“But you keep asking, Buck,” Clint said. “You keep pushing. I don’t think you have any clue what you do to me.” 

Bucky laughed, helpless, felt warmth run from the corner of his eye. He hitched up his knees, scrubbed his hands over his face, cleared his throat. 

“Always kinda hoped it was something like what you do to me,” he said, “‘cos I think I’ve forgotten how to live without you.” 

“You’ve had plenty of practice.” 

“I had some stuff to sort out. It’s just -”

“Business,” Clint finished flatly. “It’s always business. Fuck’s sake, what’s your problem? I’m a fucking Avenger, I can’t - I can’t be around you, I can’t square how I feel with what you do.” 

“Great,” Bucky said, speaking somehow around the fist-sized lump in his throat. “Perfect. Nice. Fuck this.” He pushed himself to his feet, feeling like every bone of him was protesting. “Guess that’s all there is to say.”

“You’re leaving?” Clint asked, and there was a little note of protest in his voice that was like a blade sharp enough not even to hurt going in, one you knew would kill you as soon as it was gone. 

“The, ah.” He gritted his teeth for a second. “The FBI are waiting. They’re not exactly the most patient. Bye, Clint.” 

“The… Bucky?” 

Clint sounded fucking _wrecked_. 

Bucky kept walking. 


	17. Chapter 17

“Rise and shine, sweet thing.”

“You keep talking to the coffee machine like that, I’m gonna get jealous.”

Clint grinned as hands slipped around his waist, sliding under his sleeveless shirt, both of them sleep warm and gentle with it. He leaned back against Bucky’s chest, leaving the coffee machine unfiltered for now, and greater love hath no man than that.

“Aw, you want me to be sweet to you, Bucky Barnes?”

“No,” Bucky said, stubble scraping against the sensitive skin right behind his ear. Clint shivered a little, obligingly tipped forward to allow greater access, was rewarded with the kind of sucking kiss to the nape of his neck that wasn’t far off a bite.

“See, I think you’re lying,” Clint said, swore softly at the warning hint of teeth. He turned, caught Bucky’s eyes, the unguarded way he was looking at him. “I think you want me to call you shnookums - ”

“Stop.”

“ - and pooh-bear - ”

“I will kill you.”

“ - and baby.”

Silence. Silence that was kinda lengthy, and telling, and somehow pink-tinged.

“Huh,” Clint said. “Really.”

“No,” Bucky said again, but it was just about as convincing as the last one, mulish and embarrassed and no sorta discouragement to a kiss. The good sorta kiss, the one like slow morning sunlight, like stretching back into yourself, fingers still tangled in the best kind of dream. Bucky was rocking a little against him by the end of it, and Clint lowered himself to his knees.

“Clint - ” Bucky said, and Clint happily nuzzled into the palm cupped around his cheek.

“Hey, baby, I’ve got you,” he said, and the little noise in the back of Bucky’s throat was sweeter than any pet name could ever be.


	18. Chapter 18

“It’s just a cut, really.”

Bucky stayed where he was, pressed against the opposite wall, arms folded tightly across his bare chest.

“I can’t do this if I’m gonna hurt you,” he said, and his voice was 100% genuine and stressed as all hell, and that was the only reason Clint managed to suppress the urge to roll his eyes.

“This is not hurt, this is just - ” he gestured, vaguely. “This is just life. All my friends hurt me.”

“And that doesn’t concern you?” Bucky asked, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

“Don’t with the patterns and cycles, okay, my therapist already went there and we mutually agreed that I don’t seek out pain, I’m just really annoying and kinda klutzy.”

“Not annoying,” Bucky insisted, which made Clint want to melt into a pile of goop.

“One time,” he said, “I ended up with a hand shaped bruise around my ankle ‘cos Tony dangled me off a balcony to stop me singing the first three lines of Saturday Night Fever.”

“How long had you -”

“I think… two days? And Steve, he kinda forgot that my ability to throw the shield said not a thing about catching it. Hulk’s just - Hulk, don’t ever tell him he hurt me, and Thor bruised my ribs hugging me after too many meads. It comes with the territory,” he said.

“You’re not the only human - ”

“And Tasha’s knocked me out, stabbed me, shot me, tased me, pushed me out of a window, stolen my pizza and made fun of my hair,” Clint said. “What’s your point?”

“My point is I don’t want to hurt you,” Bucky said, stubborn as hell, and Clint palmed the back of his neck and looked up at him.

“Honest to god, Buck, it’s gonna hurt way worse if you walk away.”


	19. Chapter 19

“Pipe the fuck down, asshole.”

“Fuck you,” came the cheerful reply. “Be grateful I don’t have a harmonica.”

“You play it any better than your singing?”

“Nah. Mostly I just breathe through it like an asthmatic concertina. Also, fuck you, I sing like a bird.”

“A turkey, maybe,” Bucky said, and kicked a chip of worn stone through the bars, listening to the clatter and waiting for some kinda response.

It wasn’t what he expected - another tiny chip of stone clattered, bounced and - perfectly judged - smacked straight into his knee.

“Ow, asshole!”

“Oh I’m sorry,” the guy said - Hawkeye, this mission was the first time Bucky’d met him, and already they were getting on like domestic arson. Bucky had lied, he had a voice that was pretty nice to listen to, even with that smugly sarcastic tone.

“Okay,” he said. “Truce.”

“Truce?” Hawkeye asked, sounding wary, and Bucky shoved his arm through the bars and bent it as best he could, muscles protesting as Clint audibly shuffled over, reached out to shake his finger warily. “Okay. Truce.”

It was good to know they could touch. It was good to know in the middle of the second night when Clint’s hearing aids died, and all Bucky could do was reach out to wrap his fingers around Clint’s shaking hand.


	20. Chapter 20

“Yeah,” Bucky said, rolling his eyes. “Zero fucks given. Next please.”

Steve stared between his face and the tablet, visibly struggling for composure.

“But -” he said. “But she’s wearing a little jacket. She brings you things when you’re sad!”

“I don’t get sad, Steve,” he said, patient as possible, “I get freaked out, I get pissed, occasionally I get both pissed and freaked out. I don’t need a dog to bring me shit, I need a dog to keep me focused, bring me back to Earth. Something that’d make me safe to be in public. That one I’d accidentally tread on.”

“Okay,” Steve said, the furrow that said he was concentrating hard appearing between his brows. “Okay so something bigger, something - ”

“Less floofy,” Bucky said, flicking past something that looked more like a teddy bear than a dog.

“How about this one?”

The dog on the screen was big, friendly looking, beaming with its tongue hanging out and its one eye half-closed with the size of its smile. Draped half across him was a blond guy, scruffy and barely shaved and with the bluest eyes Bucky’d ever seen.

“Says Lucky’s owner works away a lot, he’s a fully trained therapy dog, this Clint guy’s looking for someone to walk Lucky and in exchange he’s willing to lend him for bad days, says you can come pick him up with a couple hours warning.”

“I get to pick up the owner, too?” Bucky asked, and Steve rolled his eyes.

“Okay,” he said, “next -”

“Nah, wait,” Bucky said, flicked back and took a longer look at the matching grins on dog and man, and decided he could afford to give a few fucks.


	21. Chapter 21

Bucky slipped through the window from the fire escape and dripped on the floor, shaking his soaking hair back impatiently. Lucky barked in welcome and Clint startled awake on the couch, his mouth automatically spreading into a welcoming grin.

“Holy crap,” he said, “you fall off a bridge?”

Thunder growled just as he finished talking, the wind splattering rain through the window, and Bucky shivered a little, involuntary. Clint pushed up to his feet, unsteady as he reached for one of his crutches, then limped over, grabbing a towel from an unsteady pile of laundry on the bar stool.

“You should be sitting,” Bucky said, knowing it was pointless; Clint was a worse patient even than Steve, not for the bitching but for the complete refusal to adjust his life around what was wrong. Mostly that was fine, for the parts of his life that included Dog Cops and sprawling on the couch; it was the times when he found him hanging off the fire escape and attempting to adjust someone’s satellite dish with a broken arm, that was when Bucky worried.

Clint’s only response was to toss the towel over Bucky’s head, to which Bucky submitted with an uneasy kinda grace. It probably said something fairly important about trust, that he was willing to allow himself to be blinded like that, but Bucky wasn’t ready to examine that.

Nimble fingers set themselves about Bucky’s jacket, the splinted fingers on the right something of a hindrance, but eventually it was pulled free, tossed onto the counter to drip sadly onto the linoleum. Bucky attempted to start drying his hair, but his hands were pushed down every time he tried to move so he just tossed his head until the towel fell off onto his shoulders instead. He wanted to appreciate the look of fond attention on Clint’s face. He liked looking at Clint’s face.

Clint looked up and caught him looking, and there was that moment - there was always that moment - where his eyes flashed surprise, before his mouth curved into a pleased grin. Bucky leaned forward and pressed his mouth to it, perfect fit. Clint stepped in a little closer, apparently uncaring that Bucky was soaked right through to the skin and turning his shirt dark with rainwater, and Bucky deepened the kiss to the familiar soundtrack of a summer storm.


	22. Chapter 22

There was a low wolf-whistle from behind him. Bucky looked up at the mirror to see that Clint was finally awake, sprawled in the bed with the sheets slipping low and looking like an invitation to sin.

“Mornin’,” Bucky said, low and warm, and Clint grinned slowly.

“Barely,” he said. “C'mon back over here.”

Bucky snorted and grabbed the tie off the beanbag chair where he’d piled his outfit the night before, wrapping it around his neck with a gentle hiss of silk.

“Some of us,” he said, “have award ceremonies to get to.”

“Aw,” Clint said, “suits. Not even an ounce of envy in me.”

“Shame,” Bucky told him, “‘cos you look pretty fuckin’ spectacular when you’re half way out of one.”

“Figure you’d look better.” Clint stretched, slow, every muscle flexing, sheet sliding lower until it barely flirted with decency. Bucky’s mouth went dry, and the smirk on Clint’s face said he knew it.

“You got a spare suit that’ll fit me?” Bucky asked, hot eyes trained on Clint’s in the mirror, 'cos if he turned around right now there was no way he’d be responsible for his actions.

Clint snorted. “I look like the spare suit type?”

Bucky spun around, walked over to the bed, bent down to lay a kiss on Clint. It started out within his control, slow and hot and setting Clint to gasping, but it soon spiralled the way it always did with them. Bucky was left just as breathless when he finally pulled away.

“Then save it,” he said. “I’ll be back for you.”


	23. Chapter 23

Clint woke and Bucky was there. He couldn’t see him, not yet, ‘cos the pain in his skull was giving him a little trouble with lifting his head, but he knew the ice of Bucky’s anger and how it sucked away all his voice’s familiar warmth, and right now he felt viciously grateful for it. 

“I’ll kill you,” Bucky said, not as a threat but more a prediction of the future, a statement of how the future would be. “If you touch him again I will kill you.”

“I’m sure that’s true.” The voice was unfamiliar, European, cool and emotionless. “But he will, of course, still be dead. And I will have my revenge.”

The noise that tore out of Bucky’s throat was nothing like a word: not so much growl as yell, not so much yell as the hopeless grinding scream of stressed metal, twisting beyond recognition. 

“For  _what?_ I don’t  _know you_.”

“And that is, perhaps, the world’s greatest injustice.” 

Clint finally forced his head up, swallowed hard against the urge to vomit. He blinked dark spots out of his eyes and then they went instantly to Bucky, to the violence in every line of him, to the stress and the anger and the  _fear_  on his face. 

“Buck?” Clint said, rasped, and Bucky let out a soft helpless noise that had no place in the warehouse, a sound of surrender. 

“I’ll do what you want,” he said, and Clint jerked a little against the metal that held him, involuntary denial. 

“No,” he said, and his voice was coming a little clearer now. “No, what the fuck, Bucky, like hell you will.” 

“I agree to whatever demands you got,” Bucky said, flat-voiced and hopeless, and it was a strange sort of declaration of love but there was no way to frame it any way else. The clatter of Bucky’s gun on the floor was louder than Clint could handle, he couldn’t help but flinch from it, and the gut-punch fierce joy he felt when his flinch showed him Natasha’s lithe form, sneaking up… 

The fight was vicious, and bloody, and short, and Clint honestly only got shot a little. He dropped to the floor faster than anyone could stop him when the cuffs were released, and sat there on his ass with a stupid grin on his face. 

“How hard, exactly, did he get hit?” Natasha asked, curious but not too worried, because Clint collected concussions like Bucky collected throwing knives and they knew precisely the warning signs. 

Bucky ignored her, dropped to his knees beside Clint, and wrapped himself around him like a second skin, like he would never ever let go. Clint pressed a kiss to his hair, felt the fine tremble running through him. 

“Hey,” he said, almost too soft to hear. “Me too.” 

 

 


	24. Chapter 24

“So I thought you’d - I dunno, call, or - ”

“I don’t have a phone.”

“ - stop by maybe, but - ”

“You got any clue how much my movements are restricted in this damned tower?”

“ - I mean it’s not like I don’t know how to take a hint.”

“Yeah, no, you’re a fuckin’ idiot. No, don’t - not the face, Clint, Jesus. You’re a fuckin’ idiot if you think I don’t - ”

“You want - ?”

“How much more obvious have I gotta be, here?”

“I dunno, I could stand a little - ”

…

“Like that?”

“Yeah. Oh, _fuck_ , yeah.”

*

Next morning, Clint wakes to an empty bed. Again. And he curses himself for a fool for as long as it takes to pull a shirt on, to pad out into the kitchen, and then he can’t stop himself from grinning like an idiot.

There’s a note stuck to the refrigerator with the robot magnet Clint bought Tony in Prague.

//tony -

Either get me a damn phone, unrestrict my access, or accept I’m gonna fuck your marksman in the kitchen

B//

 

 


	25. Chapter 25

“'Scuse me,” Clint said, hooking his fingers into the collar of Bucky’s jacket and hauling him away from Steve, “I need to borrow this a sec.”

“Sure,” Steve said, annoyed and kinda pissy, “'cos it’s not like anyone needs to debrief him or anything,” but Clint wasn’t really listening. Hadn’t really been listening to anything much since the sound of an explosion had ripped through the comms. Hadn’t been listening to _anything_ \- 'cos nothing would ever be as important - since he heard Tony crowing.

_“Fuck you, Elsa, we thought you were dead!”_

“Slow down, tiger,” Bucky said, half laughing, circling his fingers around Clint’s wrist. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

Clint grabbed his wrist, broke his hold, spun him around so he was pressed face first against the wall with his arm twisted behind his back.

“Fuck you,” he said, and his tone was a little different to Tony’s. “I thought you were _dead._ ”

Bucky didn’t push back against his hold, didn’t move at all.

“I’m okay,” he said, and Clint - who up until this point had been pretty convinced what he was feeling was anger - surprised himself with a small hiccuping inward breath that was almost a sob.

“Fuck,” he said, “ _fuck_ , I thought you were - ” he let go Bucky’s arm, wrapped both arms around him instead, holding him close and feeling him breathe.

Bucky tried to loosen his hold, tried to turn around, but Clint wasn’t anywhere close to ready for anyone to see his face. Bucky twisted his head awkwardly, instead, pressed a firm kiss against Clint’s temple.

“Not goin’ anywhere,” he said softly.

“Promise?” Clint asked, and yeah, it was a little pathetic, but Bucky didn’t laugh at him for it, just carefully plucked at Clint’s fingers - tightly wrapped against him, determined not to let go - until he could wrap his pinkie around Clint’s.

“Promise,” he said.

 

 


	26. Chapter 26

Bucky looks down into a pouting face, into big blue eyes that’re shimmering with welling tears, and reaches out helplessly to cup the soft cheek in his hand. 

“Goddammit, Clint, you don’t play fair.” 

“Never claimed to,” he says, and Es wiggles a little against his chest, reaching out for Bucky. He swears softly, under his breath, and plucks her out of Clint’s arms, settling her carefully against his chest. His outfit ain’t exactly made for this, but he’s about as able to resist her as he is her daddy, and the realisation he’s gonna be late - well, that’s nothin’ new. 

“Can’t go without a goodbye kiss,” Clint says, a little smug, and when Bucky presses his mouth to her soft head, her fine, baby-soft hair, Clint turns away and goes for his coffee mug like Bucky’s gonna let him escape this. 

“Hey,” he says, soft as he can manage, and balances Es carefully as he ducks in when Clint turns, presses his mouth against Clint’s lips, same lips he can’t resist coming back to over and over, even with all the impossible complications that come with it. Like Es, shrieking at being ignored, wrapping her tiny fingers into his hair and tugging. 

“Aw, baby, no,” Clint says, and pulls away to help him detangle himself, setting Es in her high chair and pulling Bucky back in for one final, final kiss. 

“You get I like this just about as much as you do, right?” Bucky asks, and Clint’s inability to hold his stare says as much as it needs to. “Hey,” he says, “Clint - “

“Go save the world,” Clint says, with a halfway there smile. “Just - come back, okay?” 


	27. Chapter 27

The first thing Bucky’s consciously aware of is the fingers tangling carefully through his hair, which’s gotta be a challenge, ‘cos he knows there’s blood sticking it to his scalp in more’n one place but the fingers are endlessly careful, pulling not at all. It’s all he can do to lift his head enough to rest it on Clint’s thigh, curling his arm - the metal one, the one that still works - around Clint’s leg. 

“Hey, darlin’,” Clint says, and his voice is warm enough in the darkness that it’d be easy to pretend they were at home, if Bucky was a little more out of it. If he could mistake the cold concrete for the ugly-ass laminate Clint’s never gotten around to replacing. 

“F’ckin asshole,” he mumbles, and Clint has the nerve to laugh. “Shouldn’t’ve -”

“Like you wouldn’t,” Clint says, and it’s a fair point but it doesn’t make it any better. 

“They’re gonna kill you,” Bucky insists, a little more coherent every minute they stay like this, and Clint’s hand stills in his hair. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I figured.”

“So why’d -”

“Loving you is a real pain in the ass, Barnes,” Clint says, resigned, amused, like he’s complaining about Bucky snoring, about him leaving his towels on the floor, rather than his tendency to get kidnapped and regularly threatened with death. 

“Like I’ve got it easy,” Bucky says, and he hauls himself as high as he can get, head thumping, so he can slump a little further into Clint’s side. Trying to reach his face at this point is an exercise in futility, so he grabs for his hand instead, presses his mouth to the scarred knuckles. 

“Wish you hadn’t come,” he says, low and heartfelt. “So fuckin’ grateful you’re here.” 


	28. Chapter 28

Bucky’s first kiss is with Patty Connell, grinning and scuffed up and with his tooth loose from fighting, her with her hair scraped back and dressed up for church. Stevie doesn’t like her ‘cos she steals the funny pages from the papers on the news stand; Bucky likes the way her freckled nose wrinkles when she smiles. 

It’s not all that much of anything, quick warm pressure that leaves her red like a tomato, and he honestly can’t see what the fuss is about. 

*

Bucky’s first kiss is with Tommy Baker, the both of them going at it like it’s a fist fight, hard and brutal and fueled by adrenaline and fear. His first kiss smells like the trash in the alley and the heat of summer and fresh sweat, and tastes like freedom and Wrigley’s gum. 

Bucky lurches backwards when he hears Stevie calling him, wipes his arm across his mouth like that’ll change anything, change the way he feels when he sees Tommy - brown hair flopping over his forehead, bright blue eyes panicked - sprawled out against the wall like that. He doesn’t say anything. He walks away. Two days later he asks out Mary-Beth from the corner shop, takes her dancing. What else is he gonna do?

*

Bucky’s first kiss, shivered awake and all brand new, is with Clinton Francis Barton, part time Avenger and regular human disaster. Clint can’t stop laughing at the show on the TV, and he turns to share his grin with Bucky and Bucky dives in, just like that. Just like he’s been wanting for the longest time. 

Clint doesn’t kiss like Patty, and he doesn’t kiss like Tommy, and he doesn’t kiss like any of the other patched up memories that Bucky barely knows. Clint kisses like they’ve been doing this forever, like they’re gonna do it forever forward, like it’s the first in a long goddamn line. Clint kisses like no kinda first Bucky’s ever had, and Bucky kisses him back like no one’s ever gonna have a first with him again. 


	29. Chapter 29

It feels kinda impossible that no one can see him, not with the way the ballroom’s bright light is bleeding out into the darkness, and there’s a weird sort of power in the confidence that he’s invisible. He’d think it was a holdover from the Soldier, but there’s a reason he became a sniper, and the shadowed balcony suits him better than the bustle inside. 

He leans his elbows back against the balustrade and watches the world through glass panes. It’s a riot of tuxes and evening gowns, a whirl of color where there’s dancers, and he seeks them out without thinking. A flash of red hair and a form-fitting black dress, slit up to the thigh so it doesn’t restrict an inch of movement. Natalia’s dancing with Wilson, and he’s wise enough to look a little dazed with it, gap-toothed grin wide as his wingspan. 

Steve’s nearby, every inch the upright soldier, looking just about perfect in his tailored tux. He’s bending to listen to some old girl in swoops of pearls, and the look on her face says she’s gonna pinch his ass in less than a minute. The look on  _Tony’s_  face tells Bucky he’s the one that suggested it. He’s wearing a tux too, perfectly proper, but his sneakers are red with detailing in gold, and he’s got a stupid pair of red specs like that mutant with the stick up his ass. He’s grinning into a glass of champagne, making eye contact with the little witch, who’s dressed in emerald green and surrounded by admirers. 

Usually Barton’d be there by her side, acting the older brother with folded arms and a heavy scowl, but instead he’s found - somewhere - the only kids at the party. He’s surrounded in a corner, showing them how to fold cocktail napkins into perfect paper darts, and Bucky’s been resisting looking at him enough all evening to finally give way and indulge himself now. 

Clint doesn’t suit a tux. It’s tailored to perfection, ‘cos Tony wouldn’t allow for anything less, but he’s discarded the jacket somewhere and his tie’s all pulled to one side. Even as Bucky’s watching he fumbles out of his cuff-links, puts them down unregarded on a side table and rolls up his sleeves. Strong tanned forearms that make Bucky’s mouth go dry, and his cummerbund pressing against a body hard with muscle, and unintentionally tousled hair pushed every which way. It’s like Bucky’s own particular hell, one he’s halfway grateful to suffer in, ‘cos Clint is pulling off his bow-tie now and the line of his throat is good intentions all the way down. 

Bucky scrubs a hand over his face, and when he looks up Clint’s sharp eyes have caught his. He has no idea what Clint sees on his face, but his mouth curls up into a sideways sort of smile and he says something to the kids, sending them scrambling with a salute, before heading right for the balcony and slipping outside. 

“Been looking for you,” he says, coming to lean beside Bucky, who snorts out a laugh. 

“Bullshit.” 

Clint laughs softly, warm in the darkness, and rocks into his side. 

“Always looking for you,” he says. “Can’t help it, when you’re the prettiest thing in the room.” 

Bucky snorts again, but it doesn’t stop a stupid schoolboy flush from climbing into his cheeks. 

“You always this smooth, Barton?” 

“Never,” he says, “not ever, not with anyone but you,” and that’s about all Bucky can take. 

He pushes away from the balcony wall and grabs Clint by the hand, spinning him around until he’s pressed by the wall to the side of the door, tucked into the safest place Bucky knows right now. Bucky hunches his shoulders, protective, and brings his hands up to thread into Clint’s messed-up hair, staring into his eyes for a second before dropping them to his lips. Clint’s tongue slides out, pink and wet, and Bucky groans before leaning forward to taste it, to taste  _him_ , to do his best to make up for the words that he lost somewhere along the way. 


	30. Chapter 30

[Sequel, of course, to [this](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F11235024%2Fchapters%2F25299267&t=N2NiZjM2ZjgxYTUwZWJmZjY4ZjVmYzczOWQ1NGM4NzUxN2EzN2E5Nix5bVdzblZBUA%3D%3D&b=t%3ARv7UlJVMfQ9IvwO9DnXTzg&p=https%3A%2F%2Fwinterhawkkisses.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F162515447760%2Fquestion-are-these-and-are-you-on-archive-of&m=1)]

Bucky won’t lie, he’d been kinda hoping to hear from the hot drunk guy.  _Steve_ had got a phone call - in the morning, first thing - and for that Bucky’s inclined to like Sam, inclined to give him a chance not to break Stevie’s heart. Him, though? Nada. Another guy who’d sobered up and balked at the prospect of dating a cop. Whatever, he’s used to it, it barely even stings. 

So when Steve tells him that Sam’s called, that there’s some kinda disturbance, Bucky’s barely even thinking about Clint when they walk through the door of the bar. Seeing him sprawled against the wall with a dishtowel held to his arm is more of a kick in the teeth than he’d expected. 

“You’ve called the paramedics?” Steve is asking Sam, but Bucky goes straight to Clint, squats next to him and hovers worried fingers over the towel. 

“You okay?” 

“Oh, sure,” Clint says, and he gives a rueful kinda grin. “I’m used to it.” 

“Used to getting stabbed?” 

“Sure,” Clint says, and he lets out a laughing breath that suggests he’s been drinking again, and maybe Bucky is better off outta this after all. 

“Can you describe the girl who - “

“Stabbed me? Course. She was - not very friendly.” 

Bucky snorts under his breath quite without meaning to, and Clint’s eyes crinkle into an unrepentant grin. 

“I could tell you all about her over coffee, if you want,” he says, and Bucky’s eyes snap to his, a little incredulous. “Just you, me, a police sketch artist - pretty romantic, right?” 

“…You’re asking me out?” 

“For all intensive purposes, sure.” 

“Intents,” Bucky says, and clears his throat when Clint looks at him sidelong. “ _Intents_  and purposes, y’know, like loitering with - ?” 

“I got intent,” Clint says, and suddenly his eyes are dark, and he’s looking about ten times more sober, and a line of heat traces itself down Bucky’s spine. “I’ve got so much intent when it comes to you, you have no idea.” 

“Yeah,” Bucky drawled, flipping a page in his notebook like that would make him look nonchalant, “I could tell that from how hard you tried to contact me.” 

“Would you believe Tasha was trying to protect our secret identities?” Clint watched his face, blew out a breath and continued before Bucky could speak. “Yeah, I thought not. No one ever goes for that. She’s - protective?” 

“I’m a  _cop_ ,” Bucky says. “I get that the press ain’t exactly kind, but that’s not character reference enough for you?” 

“I’m not exactly known for making great decisions,” Clint says, and shrugs his arm a little like gettin’ stabbed is some kinda proof. 

“I’m a fantastic decision,” Bucky says. “Wanna make it with me?” 

It’s worth it, the awfulness of the line, for the way a laugh looks in the lines of Clint’s face. 


	31. Chapter 31

“Oh fuck,” Clint says, beer-drenched and squinting at the TV’s clock, “brace yourself.”

“Brace myself for wha-” 

“GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP!”

Bucky leaps off the couch, whirls around, almost overbalances but manages not to spill a drop of his beer. Fury’s nowhere to be seen, not that that means much, but - “What,” he says, “the fuck was th-”

“GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP!”

Clint’s helpless on the couch, practically crying with laughter, one arm wrapped across his belly and the other across his eyes. 

“Ow,” he manages, “oh shit, sorry, ow, fuck,” and dissolves into another hysterical bout of laughter while Bucky -

“GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP!”

\- glowers at him. 

“Friday,” Clint says, pants, hitching and uneven from his laughing, “c’mon dude, Tony’s been in bed hours now.”

“And Captain Rogers -”

“GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP!” 

“ - insisted I remind you of the early press conference tomorrow morning that you are both required to be shaved for.” 

“Right,” Clint says, and makes a hilarious face, makes him look like he’s just graduated pre-school. “Press.” 

He extends a pathetic hand, wiggling his fingers until Bucky rolls his eyes and grabs it, hauling him to his feet. Clint overbalances a little and staggers into Bucky’s chest. 

“You couldn’t have warned me?” Bucky says, and Clint’s slow grin says a lot about  _that_. 

“Coulda,” Clint says, and his mouth is wobbling a little. “But your  _face_.” 

“Fuck you,” Bucky says, and they’re still in the pre-stages, the  _when_  stages, the stages where that gets him a bitten lip and a rising flush but not quite Clint’s lips against his. 

Nah, that comes later. That comes a couple days later, rain-drenched and grinning. And it’s maybe a week after that that Clint blinks awake, heavy-eyed and sun-warm and filled with a warm slow satisfaction, and the first thing he sees is Bucky’s gentle smile. 

“Hey,” he murmurs, cupping Clint’s cheek. “Brace yourself.” 

“Wha-”

“RISE AND FUCKING SHINE, MOTHERFUCKER!”

Clint shrieks, and falls out of bed. 


	32. Chapter 32

The rules of shotgun are long-winded and complex, because Tony will cheat given half an inch of leeway and Steve gets carsick in the back seat. However, there are definitely enough Avengers for more than one car, and they can’t always have a driver, so it goes a little like this:

Bucky and Clint call pre-emptive shotgun the second a car-ride is announced. This is standard practice and according to official shotgun rules means precisely nothing until fingers are actually laid upon the vehicle. Clint dives off the couch, Bucky trips him, Clint takes Bucky down with him. The other Avengers watch from the couch; they’ve learned this can take a while. (Sometimes Bruce makes a sandwich.)

Eventually one or other of them will make it to the elevator or, if Natasha gets sick of them first, the elevator will descend carrying the other Avengers while they a) leap over stair rails and take a flight at a time (Bucky) or b) zip past on a line with a yodel. (Clint). 

Once the underground garage is reached, the real fight begins. Neither of them are particularly awesome at remembering where the car is parked and/or which one they are riding in. Due to Clint’s natural disadvantage, using the key to noisily unlock the car from a distance is ruled cheating, so they low-key sidelong watch the other Avengers until one of them breaks. (Tony. It’s usually Tony.)

Then it’s running, yelling, fighting, putty-arrowing, bola-ing, slapping and pulling pigtails until they finally reach the right car, only to realise that Sam’s smugly in the driver’s seat and Steve’s called shotgun. (And no. They can’t shift their seats up.)

Clint and Bucky are forced to resentfully make out in the back seat.


	33. Chapter 33

There’s a kind of zen to plastering. Smooth sweeps of brown that’ll fade lighter as the sun sweeps through the room, each spread careful and even and perfectly judged. The floor in here’s done, stained and varnished under the dust sheets, but the wrist twisting balancing act to keep the plaster from falling is a long-practiced trick and they’re just as clean as when he started. He’ll leave the plaster drying tomorrow - there’s tiling in the bathroom that needs attending to before he starts in on the kitchen - and then come back and paint it Wednesday. He makes a mental note to get the color mixed and tinned Tuesday night, then fishes out his phone to make a physical note, too. 

He’s halfway through dictating it when there’s a soft creak from the doorway, and it’s an effort of will not to look up, to finish his note in the same tone of voice and then save it, tuck his phone away, scoop a little more plaster for spreading. He makes note of the time, for Steve, ‘cos he seems grateful for what little Clint can tell him - that the guy’s eaten, that he’s been outside, the times he hasn’t been out of his room.  _Injured_ , Steve had told him when he’d taken the job.  _Still adjusting_. Apologetic, but still fiercely defensive, he’d said  _healing up_. All that and he somehow hadn’t mentioned that his ex army buddy was stunning, a fucking picture, like something outta a magazine. 

“It’s a good day for plastering,” Clint says, like they’re halfway through a conversation already with nothing better to do. “Not too damp, not hot enough it’ll dry too fast for smoothing. It doesn’t forgive much, not unless you’re going with paper.” 

He bends to scoop up more plaster. Bucky - James, Steve tried to remember to introduce him, but he couldn’t keep up the formality - shifts his weight in the doorway to the wood’s gentle groan. 

“I figure I’ll paint on Wednesday,” Clint tells him, “and the weather’s supposed to be fine - might be a good day for a walk if you’re wanting air, but I’ll start early enough it’ll all air out before night.”

“‘sokay,” Bucky says, his voice still that low rasp like it’s rusted, unused. “I don’t sleep so much.” 

“Been there,” Clint says. It’s a lie. He lives there. He half suspects he got into the renovation business ‘cos of one too many nights staring up at his unevenly plastered ceiling. It’s the kind of casual thing you can say, though, that’ll let you lift your head and exchange a rueful smile; it’s the kind of thing that’ll allow you to remind yourself of exactly the color of his pretty eyes. 

Clint’s too much of a professional, naturally, to dream of hitting on his client’s hermit housemate. But he wishes to god he wasn’t. 


	34. Chapter 34

Clint skins the shirt up Bucky’s torso, bunching it under his arms. He’d go further, as close to off as he can get it, but Bucky’s fuckin’ chest is a work of art and Clint was always more of a fingerpainter than a distant appreciator. One time he got chucked out of a museum for getting his hands all over a stuffed leopard, he’s always had a hands on sort of appreciation, and he doesn’t do much to resist the urge to spread his fingers across Bucky’s skin, to lean down so he can trace the lines of his abs with his mouth. 

Bucky arches towards him, still silent, but his movement is a little awkward, a little uneven, and it is legitimately hurting Clint’s heart in a way he genuinely does not know how to define. 

“You’re sure you’re good,” he says, and Bucky arches again and moans, his hands flexing. Clint takes that for agreement, peels the shirt over Bucky’s head, forced to leave it around his wrists where they’re cuffed to the bed. Which’s he’s still hurting from, still pierced and aching and awed and grateful that Bucky trusts him enough to let Clint bind him. Clint traces his tongue along the line of Bucky’s triceps, then diverts to his mouth for a pathetically needy kiss that he can trust Bucky with, like this. 


	35. Chapter 35

Tony was hard at work in the lab, because he wasn’t so good at reproducing things - things always had to be new, and shiny, and therefore Clint didn’t have a back up pair of hearing aids just waiting. So provided Tony didn’t get distracted, provided no one tried to blow up New York again, Clint might have something by morning; until that point, he was sitting in a cone of silence, watching people interact in a way he sometimes forgot to when he could hear. 

Body language was a big thing when he was a kid, obviously, ‘cos if you relied just on words you wound up getting hit when the old man snapped. Same for the Swordsman. All the polite and educated words in the world, and the length of his stride told you more than any of ‘em. He’d kind of let it slide when he’d grown, when it’d been years since his ears’d stuttered. 

Maybe the habit hadn’t slid so far as all that, though. Like right now he could tell that Bruce was amused at Thor and Sam arguing over pop-tarts. He wasn’t smiling, ‘cos Bruce didn’t always smile when the emotions were  _good_. He had his head cocked a little to one side, though, and his hands were in his pockets rather than folded across his chest. His eyes were squinting a little and you could see the places where the smile wasn’t, if you looked, the places it was hiding badly. 

Thor was amused, too, but Sam was taking the lack of pop-tarts kinda personal, if Clint was reading his shoulders right. Maybe that was living alone long term - Clint had never really managed it, ‘cos Katie-Kate took half his food and he’d have to baby-proof the cupboards if he didn’t want Lucky making a play for the other half. Sam seemed kinda offended, though, when people messed with his shit, and maybe that was something Clint should talk to Steve about once he could actually hear the responses. 

Bucky was on the couch, sitting upright and unnaturally stiff. Clint made sure to make noise on his approach - maybe overdid it a little, ‘cos he wanted to be sure - and circled around to sit next to him, nudge him a little with his shoulder. 

The not-talking, that ought to feel familiar, ‘cos Bucky wasn’t exactly the chattiest, only Clint had made a point of it. He’d felt like Bucky needed someone not-Steve to filter things through, sometimes, and he’d been happy enough to take that on. Bucky was a hoot when he was doing good, his sense of humor dry and kinda mean. When he wasn’t doing good, when he was stiff and non-communicative and letting his hair fall forward, Clint generally told him a story about the circus, or showed him photos of Lucky, or made him watch cartoons. 

He wasn’t sure how to make that work without words, though. So he figured he’d learn from others, mimic Natasha when they were friendly and no one else was there. He turned to the side, hitched his knee up on the couch and leaned in, meaning to press his mouth against the side of Bucky’s head. Bucky turned, though, startled by the movement, and Clint ended up - first time for everything - missing his target. He caught Bucky’s nose, a little of his upper lip, and he froze entirely, head empty. 

Enforced silence maybe wasn’t so bad as all that, though. ‘cos it meant Clint couldn’t break the moment, make it more awkward or dismiss it offhand. Instead he just had to watch as Bucky frowned at him, as he switched his gaze between Clint’s eyes and then flickered his eyes down to Clint’s mouth. Which was slowly smiling. Which couldn’t help it. 

His aim the second time was perfect. 


	36. Chapter 36

Lucky didn’t talk, but aside from that little personality facet he suited Steve right down to the soles of those stupid red boots. He was fiercely loyal, had the widest grin, wore his scars proudly. He was friendly, too, a kind of rare trait for a daemon, especially to someone like Bucky. Most of ‘em stuck close to their people, and most reacted to Bucky like they’d seen something grotesque, like the torn off remains of his connection was even uglier than what was left of his arm. Lucky, though, first time he saw Bucky he whined high in his throat and walked right over to nose at his fingers; who else but Steve’s daemon would ever have a reaction like that to someone like  _him_?

It helped him settle in the tower to have Lucky close. Too many people made him kinda nervous - although Bruce was okay, he was quiet and didn’t move too sudden, and the archer seemed mostly to just drape himself on armchairs and fall asleep. Steve kinda wavered back and forth with how close he’d get to Bucky, how he’d react, but Bucky figured having the dog curled up next to him, pushing up against his hand, that was enough for him right now. If nothing else, Steve still trusted him, that much he could be sure about. Even when he was spending all his time down in the lab, talking about fixing Bucky, looking disappointed when he didn’t remember things right. 

(Like Lucky. He didn’t remember Lucky. All the childhood memories that were slowly slipping back, fading into color, and not a one of them featured that one-eyed grin.)

A little careful questioning of Bruce told him that standards hadn’t changed  _that_  much since he was a kid - it was still kinda taboo to touch someone else’s daemon, but there wasn’t much you could do about a heavy golden dog draped over your legs. He made his own decisions, Bucky figured, and Bruce smiled a little just at the side of his mouth. 

“I think he didn’t get enough hugs as a child,” he said, “and people react differently to that sort of thing. I’ve never seen Lucky like this with anyone else, though.” 

As far as Bucky remembered Steve got  _plenty_ of hugs, got hauled into back-slapping hair-rumpling embraces just as often as Bucky could manage it, but his memory wasn’t proving to be the most reliable. 

Bucky trailed his fingers across Lucky’s head, rubbing just behind his ears, and across the room the archer - Burton? Barton? He wasn’t much of a talker - sighed comfortably in his sleep. 


	37. Chapter 37

( “Hey,” says a low voice, one he’s not sure he’s heard before but somehow sounds familiar. “You mind if I sit here?” 

It’s Lucky’s usual spot, but Lucky’s curled up asleep on Burton’s usual armchair, so turn and turn about is probably fair play. Bucky gestures, not willing after a day of silence to go so far as to open his mouth, and Burton sprawls into the empty space like he was born for it, like it was designed around him. 

“Thanks,” he says, with a wide open grin, and Bucky lets his mouth twitch a little upwards in response. Only polite. 

Burton grabs a throw pillow half an hour into the film, punches it into position against the line of Bucky’s thigh. Bucky wonders for the first time what the hell he’s doing all night to sleep so soundly in the daylight hours, surrounded by strangers and other people’s daemons. 

When the movie is almost done, Bucky flexes his fingers absently and finds them resting against Burton’s hair, and the urge to wind his fingers into messy-blond strands he gives into, just for a moment. Just while no one can see. 

Jeez, he’s treating the poor guy like Lucky.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to 36


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sequel to 37

“Hey, Burton,” Bucky said the next morning. He’d carefully lowered the guy’s head to the couch eventually, late for an appointment with Steve that had somehow involved clothes shopping, donuts and a tour of alleys Steve had got beat up in. By the time he’d finally got back, satisfied and even smiling a little, Burton had been nowhere to be found.

“… hey,” the guy said, but something about his smile didn’t look genuine. He palmed the back of his neck and walked out with the coffee pot, disappearing down the corridor that let to the bedrooms without another word. Lucky, who’d been curled up in the corner of the kitchen, gave Bucky a weird sort of look and trotted after him; judging by the way he looked after Bucky, there was something wrong with Burton and he was going for snuggles.

Bucky was kind of envious. The fact that he couldn’t quite say which of them he was jealous of, that was totally irrelevant.

It bugged him, though. Nibbled at the edges of his mind. Eventually he just asked Steve, ‘cos Steve was the biggest gossip Bucky had ever met.

“Hey, is Burton okay?”

Steve squinted at him.

“Burton? The PA down on 8th?”

“Yeah, when exactly would I have run into her?” Bucky asked, against whom the restrictions chafed like anything. “Burton the archer, Burton.”

“Clint?” Steve asked, and Bucky tucked that away. “Clint Barton?”

“Shit,” he said.


	39. Chapter 39

“Okay, I get this looks bad.” 

“A surprising sign of emotional intelligence.”

Clint rounded on him, practically snarled. “Fuck you, Tony, can you give us some fucking space?” 

“I built you this space! In the ‘giving things to Clint Barton’ stakes I think that counts as giving you - hey -”

Steve didn’t stop, dragging Tony by the elbow out onto the roof, where the fall sun was bright and the world was beautiful and there was no reflection of the storm clouds that practically swirled over Bucky’s head. He was glowering, and Clint would give anything to believe that he was angry, but they knew each other too well for that now. Bucky was hurting, practically bleeding out with it, and Clint would kill whoever caused that in him if it hadn’t been his goddamn stupid self. 

“So there are some things I need to tell you,” Clint said, and Bucky gave him a look that eloquently combined  _well duh_  and  _fuck you_. Maybe it was the mask Hydra always had him wear, maybe that had forced him to create an entire language that only involved eyebrows. 

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Bucky said, and got to his feet. “Looked pretty cut and dried from where I was standing.” 

“Yeah,” Clint said, “and that’s why I need to tell you some things, why I wish like hell I’d told you them before, because it wasn’t what it fucking looked like and I am not gonna lose you to this.” 

“I’m not sure how kissing someone else can be anything other than what it looks like,” Bucky said, and Clint had to do something,  _anything_  to stop him, to get to him before he reached the door. 

“I used to be married to her,” was what came out, and that was maybe the worst place to start that story, and that was the worst expression Clint had ever seen on Bucky’s face. 


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to 39

The guy was tall and willowy, darkly handsome, elegant and perfectly balanced as he moved to the beat. He was everything that Clint wasn’t, and Bucky kissed him with a vicious kind of satisfaction that turned to ashes in his mouth just as soon as he pictured Clint’s reaction to it.

He hadn’t meant to but he got the cab to take him to Bed-Stuy anyway, ‘cos that was where Clint had been staying since they’d been helping Agent Morse out with her case. Since Clint had kissed her, since they’d looked so goddamn perfect together, since Bucky had told him that whatever it was they’d had, it had to fucking stop.

Clint was sprawled out on the couch when Bucky opened the door. He’d confided, once, that he didn’t sleep so good in beds on his own.

“I kissed someone,” he said, when Clint was still blinking sleep out his eyes, and his smile slipped from welcoming, from relief, straight into rueful acceptance that was doing its best not to show any pain.

“Course you did,” Clint said, “why wouldn’t you?” And he swallowed, and he looked up, and he said, “I hope it works out, I hope they’re good to you,” and fuck, Clint Barton was the best-intentioned idiot Bucky had ever met, and he rounded the couch so he could sink down on top of Clint, could cup his hands around his face.

“I kissed someone else and I think I love you,” Bucky said, and Clint turned his head so he could press a kiss into Bucky’s palm, could breathe out something that wasn’t steady or loud enough to be heard.

“I know the feeling,” he said.


	41. Chapter 41

Tony gaped at the door that Wanda had just walked through - Vision had, naturally, just drifted through the wall. 

“I swear I am always the last one to know,” he said, sounding irrationally hurt and possibly even pouting a little. 

“Ah, Stark,” Thor said, and clapped him on the back hard enough to shove him forward a couple of paces. “Your genius with machines more than makes up for your blindness to romance. We have been making many wagers on when you will notice that Wilson has his eye on Agent Hill.” 

“Plus me and Bucky have been dating for months,” Clint said, off-hand, and it was honestly worth the seven shades of hell Bucky was probably gonna beat out of him for the way Tony and Steve’s mouths dropped open in unison. 

“There’s no way,” Steve said, and it was at that moment - because the universe liked to reiterate regularly that Clint Barton was its dancing monkey - that Bucky walked into the room. 

“How long?” Steve said. 

“How long what?” Bucky asked. “‘cos if it’s Tony’s dick I told you you gotta find that one out yourself.” 

Steve flushed crimson and Clint let out a bark of laughter that had Bucky slanting him a sideways grin. 

“How long have you been dating Clint?” Tony asked, and Bucky’s eyes widened a little, almost imperceptibly, before he walked over to drop on the couch beside Clint. Clint stiffened, expecting retaliation of the swift and brutal kind. 

“Oh,” Bucky said easily. “Months.” 

“He’s easily my favourite person,” Clint said, and he was surprised by how many ways he meant that. 

“Bullshit,” Steve said, and should’ve expected how everyone in the room gasped in unison. “No, that’s bullshit, Bucky woulda told me.” 

Clint felt warm fingers tangle with his, and he couldn’t help but squeeze Bucky’s hand a little. 

“We wanted to see if it would work out,” he said, earnest, and Clint ducked his head and grinned, fighting off a laugh. Bucky turned to face him, conveniently putting his back to Steve and Tony, and his arched eyebrow asked how far Clint was willing to go for prank. Since the answer was - pretty much - as far as it’d carry him, Clint leaned in slowly enough to be pushed away, and pressed his mouth against Bucky’s. 

It started gentle, just the barest brush of lips, and the flush of heat that climbed Clint’s cheeks, settled in his stomach, was unexpected. When Bucky parted his lips, just a little, Clint licked cautiously inside, stunned when Bucky’s tongue met his, when the kiss became something intensely and unbelievably real. He slid his hand around the side of Bucky’s neck, needing something solid to hold onto, and Bucky tilted his head and moaned low in his throat. And fuck,  _fuck_ , there was no way Clint was stopping now. 


	42. Chapter 42

“Yo, James!” 

Bucky lifted his head, flipping sun-lightened hair away from his face. The weather this far south was the bane of his fuckin’ life, always too bright and always too hot, and he squinted over at Myron and wondered where the fuck he’d put his sunglasses this time. 

“What?” he yelled. 

“Some guy’s asking after you.” 

Despite the sun, despite the sweat darkening the long-sleeve shirt he wore, Bucky felt a shiver go through him. No one should be looking for him; James Barton, part time mechanic, didn’t have anyone around  _to_  look. The agent assigned to him always stuck to whatever schedule they’d arranged, so this was either some kinda emergency or -  _fuck_. 

He had a go bag in his truck. He always had a go bag in his truck, in spite of reassurances that the Irish outfit in New York was plenty busy with arrests, and court cases, and having their entire world pulled neatly apart from under them. They were busy, sure, but Bucky was pretty certain they’d make time for  _him_. 

“He give you a name?” 

Myron ambled over, dark face shining in the sunlight, and squinted at Bucky. “Nah,” he said. “Just said you were an old friend.” He grinned, lopsided. “Knew he was lying ‘cos you’re an asshole.” 

“Ha,” Bucky said, “yeah,” and scrubbed a hand across his jaw like that’d detract from the way his voice wasn’t as steady as he’d like it. 

“You in trouble?” Myron asked, and for all that Bucky’d only been working for him six months, Bucky was pretty sure that Myron’d have his back if he asked him, and was equally certain he’d never fuckin’ ask. Myron’s wife would have his balls, for starters, and he didn’t - no one deserved the kind of guys that’d be coming for him. 

“I’m good,” Bucky said. “Probably some hook-up.” 

Myron laughed and clapped him on the back, wandered back over to the van he’d been working on. 

“Leave ‘em wanting more, right?” 

“Right,” Bucky said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards the front of the shop. “I’ll just - “

The go bag was in his truck but there was a gun in his locker, a gun and three knives and Bucky stared at them for a second like they were a weight that he had to pick up again, a weight he’d thought he’d finally managed to set down. He went with the biggest knife, ‘cos guns would echo like fuck in the corrugated metal of the workshop, and he held it backhand, pressed up along his wrist. 

It felt like the moment on a rollercoaster, just before the drop. 

“Hey,” he said, as he walked through into the reception area, “how can I -”

His voice died. He stopped breathing. 

“Hey, Buck,” Clint said. 

“Oh fuck,” he said, in a rush of helpless breath, and took two steps forward before he could regain control of himself. Clint looked - he looked the same. A little angrier, maybe, a little sadder, but  _good_ , and Bucky had a lump in his throat the size of Manhattan. 

“Found you,” Clint said, spread his hands a little, and Bucky took it for the invitation it probably wasn’t, dropped his knife to the floor and pushed right into Clint’s space, resting his forehead against Clint’s just long enough to feel Clint’s hitching breath against his mouth. Then he couldn’t hold out any longer, couldn’t breathe without it, couldn’t stop himself from pressing his lips against Clint’s and winding his fingers into his hair. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part of the AU in which Bucky is a mob boss


	43. Chapter 43

Clint brought home a couch, once, when he and Bobbi were still finding their feet, still working out how to make the heroics pay. It was mustard yellow and one of the arms was patched with duct tape, and he paid some guy ten bucks to help him haul it up the stairs. All it got him was a place to sleep that night, when she told him it was supposed to be  _their_  place, that he was supposed to be remembering to talk to her  _first_ , while he tugged at the little hairs at the back of his neck and tried to remember what she wanted some way that would  _stick._

He slept like a baby, that night. The little sign someone’d left on the sidewalk there with it -  _world’s ugliest comfiest couch_ \- had no word of a lie. 

He wasn’t thoughtless, he was just kinda dumb, and his relationships always ended because of  something he’d forgotten or hadn’t listened to right. And all the arguments in the world couldn’t stop him from hauling broken and ugly and useless things home and trying to make them work. His dumb-ass dog was a case in point. He figured that if the Swordsman hadn’t seen something in him, hadn’t hauled him in off the sidewalk and trained him,  _fixed_  him until he was something  _worth_ something… 

It was important, that was all. It was important to him to make the shitty, broken things work. 

Times had changed, and now the asking price was fifty dollars for skinny Simon to help him haul the roll-top desk up the stairs. They burst through the door in an ungainly rush and dumped it in the empty space by the window, and Clint gave the kid his money and a glass of water before heading to shower off the alley-dust and sweat. 

When he came back out Bucky was standing looking at the desk, his forehead furrowed and his arms crossed, and Clint felt his stomach squirm itself into a painful knot. 

“Jesus fuck this thing’s ugly,” Bucky said, thoughtful, and Clint offered a sheepish smile. 

“Help me clean it up and you can fuck me on it?” he offered, and Bucky came over and hooked a hand around the back of his neck, pulled him in and grinned against his mouth. 

“I love you, you fuckin’ headcase,” he said, and Clint took that to mean that he was maybe kinda broken, but Bucky was willing to make it work. 


	44. Chapter 44

Bucky curls his hands into fists around the sleeves of his hooded sweater, the one that’s too hot for the late summer sun but hides his arm and hides his scars and hides how long it’s been since he’s taken a shower. 

Steve’s at work today and Bucky’s standing in the doorway of the kitchen, rocking his weight back and forth like that’ll force him into motion, like that motion’ll end with him fed. It’s one of those simple requirements that make him feel even more like a failure when he just can’t get them done - jeez, how hard is it to dress himself, or make a sandwich, or answer the door to the mailman? - and it’s on his list of therapist-set goals. He shifts his weight again, and the floor creaks, and Clint - who’s been pretty good about ignoring his presence so far - looks up and grins at him. 

“Hey,” he says, and he always speaks like they’re friends, and the level that Bucky can deal with that has been changing daily. “I’ve got a sandwich going if you’re hungry.” 

Bucky forces himself to walk to the table and drop into a chair, and he’s pathetically grateful when Clint gets to his feet and fetches him a glass of water, a plate with a sandwich and some chips, an apple. Clint’s been working out on the deck today, and he sings half-complete songs when he’s painting, and he moves around Steve’s house like he belongs here. Bucky’s not sure how he feels about that; somewhere, he thinks, between envious and desperately wanting. 

Clint goes right back to eating like he’s done nothing out of the ordinary. Bucky pokes at his potato chips.

“You nearly done?” he asks, and Clint looks down at his sandwich for a second before working it out. 

“This place is a wreck,” he says, and grins. “I’m here as long as Steve keeps paying me.” 

“Okay,” Bucky says, and falls silent again. Chips and apples are too noisy - he’s not ready to have that much of a presence in the world - so he pulls at a piece of bread and balls it up between his fingers, squishing it down until it’s a tiny pellet of nutrition and tossing it into his mouth. Look, ma, he ate, and he’ll be texting Steve to smugly tell him that later. 

Clint finishes his lunch and pushes to his feet, heading over to rinse his plate and stack it in the dishwasher. 

“My closet door’s broken,” Bucky blurts out, awkward and a little too loud. 

Clint blinks at him. “Okay?”

“And I’ve got - there was hazard pay.” 

Clint regards him for a second, and there’s a smile curling up at the side of his mouth, and he looks at Bucky the way no one’s looked at him for a long fucking time. 

“Aaw, Buck,” he says, and it’s fond and it’s awful and it twists in Bucky’s stomach. “You asking me to stay?”


	45. Chapter 45

“Hey,” Clint said, and pressed a quick kiss to Bucky’s cheek, grabbing a slice of toast off his plate and jamming half of it into his mouth. “’arry ‘e?” 

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Not until you learn some fuckin’ table manners,” he said, and Clint grinned around his mouthful, chewed obnoxiously with his mouth open until Bucky cuffed him around the back of his head on the way to the dishwasher. 

“You’re a bad influence on the kids,” he said, and Wanda snorted. 

“We are already morally corrupted,” she said piously, “living with our unmarried - this metaphor is confusing. Are you our fathers?” 

Clint choked protestingly and Vision poked at the crumbs that landed in front of him. 

“I was created by Tony Stark,” he said. “Which would perforce make my other father Captain Rogers.”

“Repeat that when he’s here,” Bucky said, turning to lean on the counter and grinning sudden and devilish. “Do it for me.” 

“Very well,” said Vision serenely. 

“Not my fault we’re unmarried,” Clint said, mouth finally empty. “I’ve  _been_  asking.” 

“Really?” Wanda asked, suddenly interested, and Bucky rolled his eyes again. 

“Every morning since he started stealing my breakfast. Not marryin’ him just ‘cos he can’t work out the new toaster, even if he is persistent. It’s been, what, two weeks?” 

“Two weeks four days,” Clint said. “I’m wearing you down.” 

“Wearing me  _out_ ,” Bucky muttered grumpily, ‘cos yeah, maybe he would kinda like that one day, actually, and Clint making fun of him for it stung a little every time. 

Clint shrugged. “Whatever gets me there,” he said. “Kinda love you, asshole.” 

Bucky softened, couldn’t hold back his grin. “Kinda love you too.” 

“Aaw,” Steve said, walking into the kitchen, his grin wide and mocking. “Ain’t that just the cutest.” 

“Fuck you,” Bucky said cheerfully. 

“Don’t be rude to my father,” Vision said sternly, and Steve choked on air, bright red in the face. 

“Ha!” Bucky yelled, grinning widely at Vision. “Oh, man, that was amazing, marry me.” 

Clint gasped, outraged. 


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to #45

“He’s - he’s kidding with this, right?” 

Clint had both his hands clapped over his mouth, but snorts of warm air were still gusting against Bucky’s throat as he read over his shoulder. Holy shit, though, this was a lot of effort to go to for a joke, right? Like, this was professional quality, the paper, the loopy writing, the gold border around the edge… 

 _For your approval,_  the sticky note said, and it had a little x after the stylised V, and Bucky was just. Bucky wasn’t thinking about, he was not - 

_Mr Anthony Stark and Mr Steven Rogers request the pleasure of your company -_

\- Vision was a robot, and there must’ve been some kinda miscommunication somewhere - 

_for the wedding of -_

_“_ You did kinda ask him,” Clint eventually managed. “I mean, I get that you were kidding but -”

 _\- James Buchanan Barnes and Vision_  - 

“- but does  _he_  know that?”

“Fuck,” Bucky said blankly. “ _Fuck_.”

*

“You do not wish to join with me in matrimony,” Vision said, flatly. 

“Look it - it’s not you,” Bucky said, feeling horribly guilty. “It’s me. I just - I can’t marry you.” 

Vision drifted over to the window, his cape fluttering in some unfelt wind, and stared out over New York. 

“Am I permitted to know why?” he asked, and Bucky ran a hand through his hair, feeling a helpless flush rise into his cheeks. 

“I can’t marry you ‘cos I wanna marry Clint,” he said, helpless. 

“Sweet,” Clint said. Bucky turned on his heel to find Clint on one knee behind him, wearing a tux-printed shirt and an idiotic grin, holding up a ring box. Steve and Tony were standing behind him, and Tony had just taken a photo of his expression, and - 

“Oh, you bunch of fuckin’ assholes,” Bucky said, and would never admit that his voice wobbled a little over the yes. 


	47. Chapter 47

//so like//

Bucky startled awake at his phone’s buzz, on instant alert, taking a second before he could blink himself into something resembling consciousness and breathe.

//if i eat the cereal first//

The room was strange in the screen’s blue light, sharper angled yet still grainy, like a poorly printed photograph. Everything was unfamiliar, which was the most sense anything had made in a while.

//and then i go to the bodega and get the milk//

Something in his stomach told him he was better off awake, that it’d only have been a matter of time before he ended up here, and this way he could maybe sleep again afterwards.

//to my stomach that’s basically the same thing right?//

Bucky scrubbed a hand over his face and finally fumbled for his phone, and Clint’s name on the screen made him grin even when he hadn’t meant to. Even when he read the texts that’d hauled him out of sleeping.

//this is not what I expected from the future// he sent back, and the little grey bubble popped up immediately.

//FLYING CARS// Clint replied, and Bucky was startled into a laugh in the twilit emptiness of his room.

//go get the milk ill make you pancakes// he said.


	48. Chapter 48

The denim of his jeans is rough against his forehead. He can hear voices. He can hear kids laughing. He can smell - pretzels, and car exhaust, and - three, three, three - and detergent ‘cos his jeans are clean and that’d felt so much like a freaking win this morning. Okay. Four. Fuck. Four. 

Bucky lifts his head warily, his shoulders hunched, and tucks his long hair behind his ears. Okay. He can see the glowering clouds that are threatening rain, and he can see the rainbow colored umbrella of the woman sitting with her book, and he can see the pretzel cart which is honestly kinda turning his stomach, and he can see a dog. Huh. 

He eases up a little further, and it no longer feels like his heart is gonna beat out of his chest, and his breathing is returning to something resembling normal. He lets out a long breath, and the dog rewards him by easing closer, leaning its heavy body against his bent legs and resting its head on his knees, panting and grinning up at him. It’s a sandy kinda golden color, its one eye big and brown, and it’s wearing a purple collar with a four leaf clover shaped tag, so it’s no real surprise to turn it over and see ‘Lucky’ inscribed over a phone number. 

“Hey, buddy,” Bucky says, palming the dog’s head, and it’s kind of amazing how the presence of a dog immediately legitimizes the weird guy curled up on the floor alongside a bench, and it’s easy enough to give no shits about sidelong glances when there’s a sloppy pink tongue licking all the available skin, fingers and ripped jeans, going for the face which has Bucky fending him off and laughing. 

Lucky cocks his head, turning suddenly, and Bucky hears it a second later - a guy’s voice calling for his dog. Bucky has to fight not to curl his hand into Lucky’s collar, ‘cos if this ain’t the best he’s felt in weeks, but it doesn’t seem necessary - Lucky parks himself right on Bucky’s feet and barks instead, grabbing the guy’s attention. 

He grins in relief, jogging over, and he’s going commando under the grey sweatpants, which really should not be the first thing that Bucky notices about a guy but he’s not so great at eye contact any more. Plus he’s sitting on the ground, so he deserves some slack. Raising his eyes doesn’t exactly let him off the hook, anyways - the guy’s shirt is washed thin and faded purple, and it clings lovingly to a killer set of abs, to the best shoulders Bucky has possibly ever seen. 

“Hey,” says a grinning face when he’s finally managed to get his eyes up that far, gorgeous blue eyes and a fuckin’ beautiful smile, and shit, there goes his heart again. 


	49. Chapter 49

“Is it hard with your sense of direction, never being able to find your way to a decent pickup line?”

“Is it my fault I get lost in your eyes?” 

Bucky narrowed his eyes and bit his lip, trying desperately to disguise that they were edging a little upwards into a smile. There was no fuckin’ way he was losing this. 

“Can you find your ass with both hands?” he asked, fake solicitous, and Clint’s mouth curled just slightly, not close enough to a grin. 

“Are you flirting with me?” he asked, and Bucky took a quick swig from his beer like that’d do anything to discuss the light pink that was washing his cheeks. 

“Are you an idiot?” but Clint wasn’t so easily put off. 

“Wait, are you blushing?” 

“Are you kidding?” 

“No, wait, seriously, are you  _flirting_  with me?” Clint said, eyes wide and confused and a little vulnerable in the dim light of the bar. 

Tony made an obnoxious buzzer noise. 

“Repetition! After… twenty eight minutes and a whole fuckload of seconds, Clint ‘the Question Master’ Barton has been beaten at questions by Bucky ‘Haven’t You Guys Got Anything Better to Do?’ Barnes!”

“I never agreed to that nickname,” Bucky mumbles into the neck of his beer. 

“You wrote it down,” Tony said. 

“I didn’t understand the question.” 

“It’s  _right there.”_

 _“_ Buck?” Clint asked, and Bucky pushed to his feet, thumping his empty bottle on the bar on his way to the men’s room, feeling suddenly and awkwardly sober. The door clattered open again bare seconds after it’d closed behind him, and Bucky - braced against the sinks - lifted his head to look in the mirror. 

“Hey,” Clint said. “You don’t wanna choose the forfeit?”

“I don’t want anything outta you that I have to coerce,” Bucky said. 

“And if I want to?” Clint asked.  

“You asking?” Bucky returned, quick-fire, like before. 

“Pretty sure I’d beg,” Clint said, and Bucky cupped the side of his face and pulled him in, no questions left. 


	50. Chapter 50

“And what about the rumours about your love life, Cap?”

Steve stiffens and his stride falters for a second, but he ultimately keeps walking, ‘cos he’s almost as trained as Tony for the whole media circus. Bucky? Not so much.

“What does that mean?” Bucky asks, biting down on the swearing just 'cos it’s only morning, and little kids might be watching. “What’s that supposed to mean, huh?”

The guy’s eyes widen a little, torn between a healthy level of fear - so he’s not completely an idiot - and a spark of glee that he’s got one of the Avengers talking.

“Our viewers need to know if Captain America is upholding the traditional family values we expect from public - ”

There’s the soft but unmistakeable creak of metal as Bucky’s hand clenches, and the reporter wisely shuts his mouth and backs off a couple paces.

“What’re you gonna do if he’s not, huh?” Bucky asks, his voice low and angry and coiled tight. “If some guy was here right now, had you held at the end of the gun, you gonna refuse help from the Avengers 'cos one of 'em’s queer?”

“Well obviously - ” the guy sputters, and Bucky overrides him.

“Nah, you’re gonna want me to step in even if I’m gay,” Bucky says. “Right? 'Cos I am,” he says, and even in this moment there’s a rush of terror and elation and a feeling like free-falling, “I’m gay. As. Shit.” He pokes the guy in the chest on each word, metal finger likely leaving bruises.

He leaves the guy mouthing like a fish, stalking over to the quinjet and throwing himself into the co-pilot seat. It’s kinda become his seat, now, and Clint is staring at the side of his face.

“What?” He snaps.

“Just hoping that’s the truth, 'cos -”

“It’s gonna be everywhere, I know. Fuck it.”

“'Cos,” Clint says, patient, “I’ve been trying to work it out for months, and if you were lying it’s gonna break my little heart.”

“Not lying,” Bucky says, and Clint gives him this look that’s amused and pleased and touched with heat that he’s just kinda registering has been there for a while, now.

“Ready for some rumours about your love life?” He says.


	51. Chapter 51

“I love you.” 

 Clint froze for a second. Maybe even stopped breathing. Then the tension in his hunched shoulders deliberately uncoiled and he went back to stirring the pot on the stove, letting out a breath. 

“Nope,” he said. “Try again.” 

“I’m sorry too,” Bucky said, “I just - that one seemed kinda more important to say.” 

“Because you figured it’d make me less mad at you?” Clint asked, and his voice was sharp. Bucky risked taking a step closer. 

“Because I meant it. Because that whole thing, with the -”

“Falling to your death?” Clint said. “Because you’re too much of an asshole to prioritize your own goddamn safety?” 

“With the quinjet, and the parachute, it brought some stuff into focus.” 

“Was it the ground?” Clint asked, sting of sweetness, “what with you getting a close up and all.” 

“Clint,” Bucky said. He took another step closer, almost close enough to touch, and he didn’t miss the way Clint swayed just the barest fraction backwards. 

“Fuck you,” Clint said. 

“I love you,” Bucky told him, hand hovering just an inch away from his side. 

“ _Fuck_  you,” Clint said, and spun around to haul him into a tight hug, pulled him in until it felt like his ribs creaked. 


	52. Chapter 52

There was a perfect silence for a second after he was done reading, and Clint Barton - aka Professor Barton, aka professor hot-ass, aka ‘smarter than that hawk-guy’, at which Bucky had rolled his eyes and planted a copy of ‘A Brief History of Time’ in front of Tarrina on her break - rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

“So that was from my book - ‘Let Me Be Perfectly Queer: the semiotics of a subculture’. Which I’m gonna go scribble on over there in a second if you wanna get your copy defaced. Um. Thanks?”

His gratitude was almost entirely drowned out by a storm of clapping that seemed to startle him, if his wide-eyed grin was any indication. And Bucky - who had gotten over meeting admired authors in about his second year of owning his bookshop - felt a treacherous squirming in his stomach.

He edged closer, intending to hand over Barton’s requested 'e-fucking-normous coffee’ and guide him to the signing table, but he’d already been cornered by one teary-eyed fan.

“…self-conscious to study it, and your book just broke it down so well into words I could get, and it made me feel clever for the first time and I just -”

“Aaw, crying, no,” Barton said, dismayed, and before Bucky could step in and smooth over the awkwardness - comical in itself, since this place was called Grumpy Bear Books for a reason - Barton had wrapped his arms around her and was rocking her a little, back and forth.

“Hey,” he said gently, “hey. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you gotta be all educated to be smart, okay? I grew up in the circus, didn’t even learn to read until I was ten, and my first time in a proper school they thought I was a dummy.” He pushed her away just a little, ducked his head to give her the most impossibly beautiful smile. “Prove 'em wrong,” he said, soft and gentle, and this guy was a freaking menace to Bucky’s heart.

 

 


	53. Chapter 53

Bed-sharing etiquette was not a thing one learned in cryogenic deep freeze.

Clint had shared beds for a lot of his life, when it came down to it. His mom and dad didn’t have enough space for Barney and him, and in the circus they were so grateful by the time they graduated to a bed that it didn’t matter they had to share it, and with Natasha body heat evolved into best friend sneaky poke-fights within hours.

Also, he wasn’t inexperienced, obviously. He’d never been a love ‘em and leave 'em type, not particularly prone to the one night stand, and one time he’d even been married. They tended to leave _him_. So he respected the sides, and the sharing of the eiderdown, and where exactly to put cold feet. He was comfortable enough on his masculinity to be either of the spoons, and had become kind of an expert at sleeping through snores.

Bucky was… an education. He kicked, and thrashed, and made selfish nests with blankets. He started the spectrum each night at hedgehog but always slid down to octopus by morning, wrapped tight and uncomfortable so Clint was reminded of his presence with every squeezed breath. He woke, once, with a hand over his face and a finger up his nose, and -

And he woke smiling. Every damned time.

'Cos sure, he breathed in Bucky’s hair until he was practically coughing up hair balls, but what was that weighed against the knowledge that someone wanted, kept wanting, to stay that damned close?


	54. Chapter 54

Clint’s a shivering, dripping mess on the welcome mat that Steve had insisted on, sniffling pathetically as rain drips off the end of his nose.

“I know you’re still mad at me,” he says, before Bucky can even react, “you’re just the only guy I know who lives nearby.” 

He’s clutching at his ribs, and there’s that moment of terror, ‘cos if there’s anyone in Bucky’s life that’ll get themselves killed by accident, probably saving some old lady from a mugger or some other horrendously noble shit, that person is Clint goddamn Barton. There’s a tiny squeaking, though, a shifting movement, and a tiny bedraggled ginger kitten pokes its head out of Clint’s zipped sweatshirt.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Bucky says, blankly, and scrubs a hand across his face before hopelessly stepping aside. 

Clint doesn’t go further than the entry, rainwater spattering onto the newspaper that’s set there for Steve’s boots. Bucky holds out his hand, expecting Clint to strip off his soaked sweatshirt; instead he gets a handful of damp fluff and grumbles, its tiny accusing blue eyes hating on him for not being food shaped.

“The fuck am I supposed to do with this?” he asks, while Clint hauls off the outer layer of clothes, leaving him in a gray shirt that’s damp enough to cling to him, and Bucky’s mad at him, this is an important thing to remember. “The fuck am I supposed to do with  _you_?” he asks, despairing. 

Clint steps out of his shoes, and his sock’s got a hole in it in the heel, and Bucky turns around and heads straight for the bathroom because he’s  _mad_ , okay. He pulls a towel off the heater and coils it into a nest for the kitten, then grabs another for Clint, turning to find that the man’s followed him in, that he’s close enough to touch.

“You need to remind me why I’m angry at you,” Bucky says, his eyes flicking between the rainwater beaded on Clint’s eyelashes and the bitten-red of his lips.

“I - er -” Clint says, his pupils wide and dark and his voice low. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky says, and gives into the inevitable; there’s no way he’s not gonna have a fuckin’ pet bed in his bedroom, this time tomorrow, and there’s no way he’s resisting Clint Barton’s goddamn mouth.


	55. Chapter 55

First time Bucky saw Clint, the guy was bent over his mailbox. And Bucky’s mailbox had been stuffed with condoms, had had a crucifix hung off of it, had been slammed with a baseball bat, had - oh hey, ‘fag’ in bright pink paint, nice. 

“Hey!” he hollered, and the guy’s head came up like a startled horse, big blue Iowa-sky eyes wide. “Hey,  _fuck_  you, I’m calling the fuckin’ -”

He registered the bowl of dish-soapy water, then, the yellow rubber gloves and the sponge dripping pale pink. 

“Hey,” the guy said, sitting back on his heels. He offered Bucky a smile, like greetings with swearing and yelling were standard practice around here. “Sorry, I didn’t figure it’d be so stubborn.” 

“I - sorry,” Bucky managed, feeling all wrong-footed. “I didn’t -”

“You should absolutely call the cops,” he said. “I actually already -” he held out a hand, registered the dripping sponge, pulled off his glove and dropped it in the soapy water and then stared at it in dismay for a second. “I actually am the cops,” he said, fishing out the glove and shaking the water out of it sadly. “Hi.” 

“Wow,” Bucky said flatly. “I feel safer already.” 


	56. Chapter 56

“I don’t understand how you are so relaxed about this,” Natasha hissed, and Clint shrugged, kicking his heels against the leg of the table he was perched on.

“I get it,” he said. “Least important Avenger, over here.”

“Clint, you’re not -”

“Plus I’ve been married before.” He cut right over the top of her, which was probably screwing up some kind of etiquette listed in a book he’d never read. It was always kinda awkward when she tried to bolster his ego, though, when she didn’t seem to realise that outside of archery he didn’t so much have one.

“What’s that got to -?”

“I’m over the whole romance thing,” Clint said. “Tax breaks and giving way on the unimportant things, that’s about it for marriage.” He shrugged. “It’s better than it falling to someone who’d actually take this shit seriously, right?”

“I don’t like it,” Natasha told him, stubborn, and Clint curled up his fist and tapped her on the shoulder, the closest they really got to a hug.

“No one likes it,” he said, “and no one trusts Hydra as far as they can throw ‘em, but there’s a saying here about friends and enemies and closeness, right?”

“I don’t want him that close to you,” Natasha said, and there was genuine worry in her voice, and the fact that she allowed him to hear that settled in a warm place right next to his heart.

“Half of the rumours about him probably aren’t even true.” He let out a breath, and then tilted his head to look up at the ceiling. “Hey JARVIS,” he said, and his voice was practically steady. “Show me my future boo.”

An image flickered into being in the air, and Clint stared at it for a moment, his mouth dropping open.

“Oh no,” he said. “He’s hot.”


	57. Chapter 57

“So how is this supposed to work?”

The voice comes from behind him, low and scratchy and possibly amused. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Clint says, ‘cos he’s struggled and he’s pulled and he’s pretty sure his wrists are bleeding and he’s got splinters from the gods-damned lightning-struck tree and he’s no closer to freeing himself than he was at midday. 

The sun’s set now, almost entirely, just a wash of red and orange across the sky in the west and the darkness of the forest behind. Clint doesn’t give up easily, doesn’t give up basically ever unless all he’s giving up on is himself, and his shoulders unknot and he slides down a little against the ropes, lets out a long breath and all his hopes with it. 

“The village offers you tribute,” Clint says, flat and practiced. “And requests that you -”

“Yeah,” the voice says. “Heard it.” 

He circles around from the left, looking at Clint curiously, and Clint was honestly expecting something a little more impressive. He’s solid-built, and his hair is long and untouched by bleaching with lime, and he has ashes smeared around his eyes so they look paler and bluer against it. He’s tall, but not tallest, he’s strong, but maybe not strongest. He’s silent, though, and that’s something that would impress, that would lend death’s favor in the forest. 

“You’re not my usual type,” he says abruptly, and Clint shrugs. 

“It’s been a tough winter,” he says. 

“Ran out of virgins?” 

“Ran out of a lot of things.” 

“So they chose you.” His voice is flat, unimpressed, and Clint kinda bristles at it.

“I’m a prize, pal,” he says, and the guy doesn’t even have to say anything, just arches a cynical brow. Clint deflates again. “Yeah, okay, they kind of really hate me.” 


	58. Chapter 58

Bucky finds Clint curled up next to the couch, curled in the narrow gap between it and the wall, and he’s not-crying in that way that veers dangerously close, hitching breaths and angry exhales, looking up at the ceiling and shoving his sleeve under his nose.

He pushes the couch over, one-handed, and it screeches and scrapes across the floor just far enough for him to squeeze in next to Clint, for them to overlap a little so they push against each other as they breathe. 

“I hate this,” Clint says, miserable. He’d been helping a new tenant move in, hauling boxes and shifting furniture, and every line of him is a study in aching, ‘cos it’s been the longest time since anyone would let him lift, or carry, or spar. 

Bucky takes his hand and sets his thumb to pushing out the knots in Clint’s palm, Clint’s fingers curling in reaction around his. 

“You’re getting better,” Bucky says, and he states it flatly like a fact, hammering uncertainties into alignment with the way the world ought to be. 

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Clint says, and Bucky moves his hand carefully up forearm to elbow, Clint hissing as his arm extends. 

“Doesn’t have to,” Bucky says, and he keeps methodically massaging Clint’s arm, ‘cos that’s what he needs to do, and doesn’t run a hand over his chest again - just checking - because that’s not what  _Clint_  needs.  

The sun disappears out of there corner before it leaves the rest of the room, and it’s a place where secrets can be whispered away from anyone else that’d care. 

“What if you guys don’t need me any more?” 

and 

“I always fuckin’ will.” 


	59. Chapter 59

“Look, we really are sorry about this,” the fair one says, shoulders hunched; his sheepish smile is the last thing Clint sees before the stinking sack drops over his head. 

The awkward, jostling, uncomfortable,  _terrifying_  ride after - where he can rely on neither hearing nor sight, and must only brace himself as best he can in the corner of the carriage and simply wait desperately for it to be over - is best not spoken of. 

When they finally draw to a halt - when he is finally pulled from the carriage with surprisingly careful hands, set on his feet, dusted off politely – the bag is removed to reveal that they are standing in an ancient courtyard. It is empty of all signs of human life, and the local beasts have evidently taken full advantage. Wild pigs are rooting about in the foliage that has taken over what must have been the stables, and archers’ slots are filled with nesting birds.

It’s the dark-haired man who stands in front of him when Clint has done gawking, a small lop-sided smile on his face.

“I’m Tony,” he says, his beard kept short enough that his lips are easy enough to read. “We find ourselves in need of your skills.”

He holds up one of the garish flyers that Mr Carson had had Natalia paint. This one features a stylized bow and arrow, and the words running across it are unintelligible to Clint but he’s heard them enough in the ring to have some idea of what they say.

‘The Prince of Precision, Royalty of the Range, the AMAZING HAWKEYE!’

“You want me to shoot someone?” Clint asks, looking around for the other man. He doesn’t like to have people behind him.

There’s a buzz of noise – just as he locates the fair man sitting at the base of one of the towers, sitting halfway up surprisingly swept steps – and Clint turns to face Tony again.

“Repeat that?” he says, and Tony’s sharp eyes narrow, flicking to Clint’s ears. Clint hunches defensively, because revealing weakness is never a good move, and folds his arms across his chest to display his well-developed muscles. Tony would do well not to try anything.

“Actually we want you to kiss someone,” Tony appears to say, and Clint blinks at him blankly.

“What.”

*

The rumour of the sleeping prince had even made its way to the circus. They had assumed it was the same as all stories that reach them – tangled, and unfinished, and viewed under curved glass. The basics were simple enough, though. A mysterious illness, a sleeping prince, a frankly insane request that all local minor royalty – of which there were many, for the dark woods covered many kingdoms – attempt to wake the sleeper.

“Not seeing how this concerns me,” Clint says, and Tony sends an exasperated look at his fair friend before pointing deliberately at the words on the flyer.

“You guys know you’re crazy, right?” he says.

“Steve is desperate,” Tony says, and he looks for a second more honest than he has before, more tired, more unhappy. “His best friend is lost to him and he cannot help. It’s killing him, and I owe him a life debt, and I’m not gonna stand by and leave him unhappy.”

Clint lets out an explosive sigh. “And you’ll return me to the circus when I’ve proved you’re insane?” he asks, and at Tony’s confirmation he turns to the tower. “Fine,” he says. “Fine.”

With all that the two men can do, the tower is still showing signs of age and wear. The sleeping prince is surrounded by cobweb-filled corners, his fine green blankets showing an equally fine layer of dust. Clint likes the man immediately, for his forehead is creased with a fearsome frown, and he looks like he will wake – if wake he will – prepared immediately to lambast Steve and Tony for their efforts.

Aside from his frown he is prince-like enough. He has the appropriate strength of jaw, the fine bone structure, the glossy length of hair spread over his pillows. Clint idly thinks that he has a handsome face, but still balks immediately at what they ask him to do.

He makes them leave – for privacy’s sake – and then drags over a padded chair to the side of the bed.

“I’m not kissing you,” he tells the sleeping prince flatly. “I don’t kiss people who don’t ask me for it. But I’ll stay with you a while. You surely don’t have the face for sleeping alone.”

There’s little to distract him in the dusty tower, and Clint finds himself talking instead, telling tales of the circus, of Natalia’s daring stunts, and the wild and ferocious beasts, and the painted clowns and their tumbles. As the sun fades from the sky, painting the room in shades of orange and rose, he sings soft and tired, like Natalia as she wipes clean their thick grease paint.

Sunset fades to true night, and Clint is about to return the chair to its corner and force Tony to return him home when he sees something flash from the corner of his eye. Without thought – Barney would say he is always without thought – he has an arrow strung and loosed, and for a moment he thinks there was nothing there to hit. But on closer approach, he sees the strange insect-like creature that his arrow has pinned to the wall. Even closer, and he can see that it is not a creature at all, but a strange automaton, made precisely from metal and glass. Its wings are still buzzing a little, twitchy and lopsided, and Clint makes sure not to touch it as he angles for a closer look. Its tiny face is eyeless, but it has sharp teeth, teeth which drip with something thick and milk-white. The whole of it is unnatural and somehow cruel, and Clint waits until it is entirely without movement before he pulls out his arrow and wraps it in cloth.

When he turns to the door, movement from the bed catches his eye. Moonlight-grayed eyes stare at him for a moment, and then there is sudden motion, faster than he can react to, and he is pressed against the cold stone of the tower with the prince’s fierce frown bare inches from his face.

“Who the hell are you?” 


	60. Chapter 60

Clint jogged over to fetch the tennis ball again and returned to Lucky, who was sprawled happily on the grass, tongue lolling. 

“You’re supposed to go get the damned ball,” he said, dropping the sopping green fuzz in front of Lucky’s nose. “I’m not the one with the high cholesterol, mister, and I refuse to have your doctor bully me again.” 

He threw the ball again, then slumped down next to the dumb freakin’ dog that he hadn’t even meant to own in the first place. 

“You kind of suck,” he told him. Lucky beamed and rested his head on his knee for scritchings. 

There was a damp thump by Clint’s foot, and a tiny corgi wagged its tail at him, Clint’s tennis ball between its front paws. 

“See?” Clint told Lucky, “someone around here knows how to dog.” 

“Yeah, pretty sure it’s you,” said a voice, and Clint looked up to see - wow. Wow, those were some short damned shorts, kinda incongruous with the long sleeves of his sweatshirt. “Were you playing fetch with the dog, or was the dog playing fetch with you?” 

“I’m comfortable with my position in this relationship,” Clint said, grinning up at the stubbly perfection of the guy’s face. 

“And it ain’t the one holding the leash,” the guy said, and  _heh_ , Clint thought,  _willing to let you hold_ my _leash._

…and shit.  _Shit_. That was not his internal monologue voice, was it. 


	61. Chapter 61

Pizza has always been… fine. Whatever. It’s good, sure, but it’s got nothing on Thai food, jerk chicken, really good Mexican. Bucky’s also become a fan of things that take longer, things that require a little finessing and can’t just be grabbed between jobs. He’s working towards hedonism, as a lifestyle choice, and he’s enjoying every inch of it.

Hedonism, though, it’s got different shapes. You wouldn’t think milk crate furniture would feature heavily, duct tape, pet-hair and dust bunnies taking long-term leases of the corners. And somehow pizza’s central to it too. Grease-spotted purple shirts. The quirk of Clint’s mouth as he crooks his neck to catch stretching mozzarella.

So when they ask him - and they do, ‘cos there’s nothing quite like the inanity of post-job 'journalism’ - he tells them pizza, with a stupid grin. He loves pizza. Pizza’s the fuckin’ best.


	62. Chapter 62

“Sometimes, being a complete nerd comes in handy.” 

Bucky’s score was just - embarrassingly higher than Clint’s, and it was more of a turn-on than he would ever have expected. Celebrity Jeopardy had been one of Tony’s weirder ideas, but Bucky had seemed kind of enthused about it, which was rare for him. He and Clint were still off active duty - Clint had dislocated something, or torn something, he hadn’t really been paying attention to the medical types - so they’d been the logical choices. And now Bucky was in the middle of storming a round called Shakespeare Deathmatch and Clint kinda wanted to drop to his knees behind the desk. 

“How the hell do you know all this?” 

Bucky shrugged, and looked a little embarrassed for a second, pink coloring the tips of his ears. 

“I read,” he said. “I used to read to Stevie all the time when he was sick, and Tony’s got a pretty good library.” 

“Wow,” Clint said, a little dazed. “He does? I’m just - I’m picturing you in little reading glasses now.”

“Fuck off,” Bucky said, “Super soldier vision, dick.” 

“Look, let me have my fantasies,” Clint said, “make up for the unbelievable ass-kicking I’m getting on television, huh?” 

“…fantasies?” Bucky said, curious. 

“I’m seriously an inch away from swallowing your -”

“Filming again in five,” a kid with a clipboard says, her cheeks blotchy red. “Um, remember that you’re mic’d up, okay?” 


	63. Chapter 63

Bucky wakes up with the imprint of keys on his face, which is progress - he  _wakes up_ , which implies that at some point last night he  _fell asleep_  - but not progress he thinks Steve is gonna be proud of. He wipes a hand over his face, thinks for a minute about getting up to wash it, but there’s a whole apartment between him and the bathroom right now and he’s not entirely sure he can handle it. 

Ugh. 

Maybe today he’ll open his curtains. Maybe that can be today’s goal. He fumbles for his phone, holds it awkwardly in his prosthetic hand and taps out  _curtains_?, sending it to Steve and waiting for the response. Sure enough it comes back almost instantly, the sound of the vibration against silicone putting his teeth on edge. 

 _Starting point,_  Steve says,  _gonna need more._  

‘cos of course he is. ‘cos fuck him, anyway. Bucky ponders what his other goals for today will be while he idly refreshes the page he was on, distracted from his train of thought when a video pops up, freshly posted. It has a dog with a cape and a superhero mask, okay, it’s gotta be gold. 

The dog’s kind of adorable, grinning big, its one eye bright brown through the mask which is a shade of purple that shoulda died in the ‘80s. The cape is being industriously flapped by someone off camera, even as the dog lets out a soft groan and lies down. 

“Laziest superdog,” a girl’s voice says, “just like his owner. Make the noises, Clint!” 

There’s a long-suffering sigh from the cape flapper. 

“Nyoom,” he says, monotone and joyless, and for some reason in combination with the industrious flapping it strikes Bucky as kinda hilarious, and he snorts loud enough to startle himself. 

He rubs a hand over his mouth, the familiar stubble and the unfamiliar curve, and watches it again for good measure. 

 _Gonna go take a shower_ , he texts Steve. 


	64. Chapter 64

Bucky slides in close and Clint’s turn and grin are natural as breathing, seems like, which does a little something to ease Bucky’s gut.

The worst of it is the way Clint has no clue. Genuinely has to be smacked upside the head, has to be pressed up against a wall and kissed within an inch of his life, before he notices that someone’s got a thing for him.

And sure, that works for Bucky, ‘cos he can do without the competition. He’s aware he ain’t exactly cat’s pyjamas, here. So Clint’s low self esteem is all in Bucky’s favour, but that means he has to watch all the guys that dance up close. Has to watch Clint show off his skills and charm all the women with how bashful they can make him. Has to wonder which one of 'em would be better for Clint than Bucky’s ever gonna be.

“Lookin’ good out there,” he leans in to say, close enough to be heard over the pounding bass.

“Bullshit,” Clint says cheerfully, winding his arms around Bucky’s neck.

“Most beautiful thing any of 'em’s ever seen,” he insists, and kisses the dubious right off of Clint’s face.


	65. Chapter 65

“I learned it at the circus,” Clint says, with the kind of earnest grin that separates a man from his money easy as breathing. “What’ve you gotta lose?”

Bucky tucks the cigarette he’s been rolling behind his ear, ‘cos nicotine does fuck-all to a super soldier’s body, but the process became somehow meditative. He holds out his left hand, head cocked, and Clint pushes it aside, gives him the finger in return.

“What,” he says, “you want your fortune in binary?”

Clint takes Bucky’s right hand between his own, the archer’s calluses not quite like anyone else. The gentle stroke of thumbs against his palm sends electricity up the line of his spine, and Bucky bites down on the meat of his lower lip, 'cos he’s not afraid to show what Clint’s doing to him.

“So what do you see?” He says, and Clint grins.

“What do you wanna hear?” He asks. “The 2.5 kids? The picket fence? The -” he looks down, brushes his thumb again along the lines of Bucky’s palm - “the Labrador mix with the purple collar and one eye?”

“What do you wanna tell me?” Bucky asks, and Clint stares at his palm for a moment more before ducking his head and looking up, chewing on his lip.

“You’re gonna be happy,” Clint says, and “I’m gonna make you happy.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Bucky says.


	66. Chapter 66

The leader of the resistance ain’t exactly what Barnes had pictured. They all call him Hawkeye, they call him the Hawk, and he’d expected some old guy, grizzled, pretty clearly fuckin’ deadly. What he got instead -

“Aaw, coffee,” Barton said, holding his fatigues up with one hand, welding mask perched incongruously on top of his head. (Coffee it ain’t. Bucky had no clue what Barton’d spilled down himself, but they’d had no coffee for weeks.)

He was a young guy. Not war young, not quite whole life ahead of him young, but certainly too young to have all these vets gathered behind him. He couldn’t even grow proper facial hair - shouldn’t be allowed to grow that kinda facial hair - and when his girlfriend/wife whatever gave him a scolding he looked all of twelve years old.

(“Fuck,” Barton said, hunted, “don’t call her that.” He considered a moment, then grinned. “Although thanks, for thinking I could.”

God help him, but the big blue eyes, the occasional flashes of competence… Bucky did.)


	67. Chapter 67

More than anything, the man looks tired. 

He’s good - he must be good, to have made it through the rounds far enough that they think he’ll make a good showing against the Soldier - but he looks like nothing special. He has wide shoulders and a good stance, so stamina but not speed will be a strength. He has sticking plasters in many places and a bandage around one arm, so someone has chosen him to sponsor. He has hair the color of ring-sawdust and eyes the color of a distant corner-caught glimpse of sky. 

Nothing special. 

The Soldier watches him. To have him attend training is not unheard of, although it is not frequent. He will not fight; there would be no point to have him fight here, where the audiences are not. But they watch him, all of them, out of the corner of their eyes, the way you would watch a tiger or a vicious dog. 

The new man - the man who has sold himself to this, who has fought and killed to be here, who must have in that time become vicious and cold - comes to sit next to the Soldier. 

The Soldier blinks. No on has done that before. 

“Hey,” the man says. His mouth curls into the friendliest of grins and his eyes crinkle up almost to hide the blue. “Sorry you’re gonna have to kill me.” 

It could be - a taunt? A means to get him off balance? The strangest method the Soldier has ever heard, perhaps, but he may have been falsely informed that the Soldier can be swayed.  

“He doesn’t talk,” someone says, passing, though they speed up their steps when the Soldier’s gray eyes snap up to theirs. 

“Huh,” the man says. “Well that’s shit.” He taps his fingers against the bench, callused skin rasping when it catches. He tenses his arms as if to push himself up and then says, “I’m sorry, man. That you don’t get to escape this.” 

He pushes to his feet, and the Soldier watches him go. 


	68. Chapter 68

“Tony, where the hell are you?” 

Steve’s voice is loud on the comms, frantic, and Bucky squeezes his shoulder and then looks up, instantly alert as running feet sound in the corridor outside. Not nearly heavy enough to be - 

Clint rounds the doorway, flushed and sweating and this really ain’t the time to be noticing that, to be focused on how his hair curls against his temples when it’s damp. 

“You can’t be here,” Steve says, “Clint, you need to get out of -” but Clint’s ignoring him, flapping a hand absently, studying the case of the bomb that’s steadily ticking down. His eyes flick around the room, looking for anything vaguely useful in the drift of paper, smashed coffee cups, fragmented keyboards. 

“ _Clint_ ,” Steve says, leader voice, “you’re not the man for the job here. We can’t have you -”

Clint ignores him entirely, rummaging in his pocket and pulling out a handful of loose change. He tosses Bucky a dime. 

“Flatten it?” 

Bucky does so against the edge of the metal table, his arm whirring as he applies pressure. He flips it back to Clint, who uses the sharp edge to undo the fiddly fuckin’ screws that are holding the case together, pulling it open with a low satisfied noise. 

He whistles tunelessly under his breath as he picks at the tangle of wires inside, running his fingers along them. Steve is talking over comms to Tony, but Bucky’s ignoring the noise, focused entirely on what Clint’s doing. There’s always something compelling about Clint when he’s focused, blue eyes narrowed and muscles tensed, ready to take on whatever comes at him. This, though, this is a new kinda competence, and if Bucky’s going out today 

(00:59, the bomb says, 00:58)

he’s okay with going out on a fantasy of Clint in a tool belt and very little else. 

“Tony’s on his way,” Steve says, tense, and there’s an edge to his voice that says yeah, he’s seen the time left, and yeah, he thinks they’re fucked. “Clint, you should -”

“Can you fix it?” Bucky interrupts, and Clint rocks his hand back and forth, thoughtful. 

“Guy in 4C’s got a Betamax,” he says, “and I managed that one. Also I can put together an Ikea media unit in half an hour and change.” And sure, it sounds like he’s talking a different language, but he’s got the easy tone he gets in his voice when he’s talking targets, and Bucky lets himself lean back against the wall, crosses his arms. 

“Clint,” Steve says, kinda helpless, but it’s Bucky that Clint turns to, winks at him and holds eye contact as he tugs on a wire. 

_We who are about to die_ , Bucky thinks,  _wanna get on our knees for you._

The bomb flashes up zeroes, garish and red, and Steve claps Clint on the shoulder and jogs out of the room. Bucky, he stays exactly where he is, and Clint still ain’t breaking eye contact. 

“I’m… assuming that worked?” Clint says, and grins all wide and real. “I’m great at bombs.” 

“You’re a fuckin’ genius,” Bucky tells him, and Clint looks like he’s gonna do the ducked head thing he does whenever anyone says something nice, so Bucky grabs him by the nape of the neck, tilts his jaw up with his thumb, and sets about convincing him, hot and emphatic. 

 

 


	69. Chapter 69

It was a surprisingly involved process. Bucky mostly just followed instructions as Clint reduced passata and pesto, sliced up some weird looking mushrooms which he fried up with garlic and onions, and pulled apart balls of mozzarella. Eventually the whole complicated masterpiece was shoved into Clint’s oven, the whole apartment soaking in the delicious warm smell of slowly cooking pizza. 

Clint started pulling together the various utensils and boards he’d used, running water into the sink with some dish soap, and Bucky stepped up behind him, placed his hands on Clint’s hips. 

“Hey, leave something for me to contribute, here,” he said, sliding his hands across to rest on Clint’s belly as the guy automatically rested back against him, tilting his head just a little to one side so Bucky could more easily tuck his chin into the crook of Clint’s neck. “This ain’t exactly what I was expecting.” 

“I figured you’re worth a little more than take out pizza,” he said, and Bucky pressed him forward enough that he could reach the faucet, turn off the water so it didn’t spill over when he span Clint around, cupped his face and leaned in for the kinda kiss that takes no prisoners, that tells no lies. 

Clint was all in from the first, arching his back so he was pushed right up against Bucky, the heels of both hands against the back of Bucky’s neck and all of his fingers threaded into long hair. Bucky didn’t even try to bite back the soft sounds that Clint was pulling outta him, wrapping both arms tight around him like someone was gonna try to take him away. 

He’d gotten used to feeling cold, to his feelings being locked up in a frozen ball in the middle of his chest; Clint had a steady kind of warmth that’d had him melting before he even registered the heat. Now he had trouble cooling off, couldn’t slow it down, Clint pulling away just enough to give him a look that was hot like burning. 

…wait. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky said, hauling open the oven and shoving his metal hand straight in, pulling out the dark brown carcass of the pizza as Clint used the potholders he’d grabbed to fan smoke away from the alarm on the ceiling that was setting up a high-pitched beeping. 

“Aaw, pizza,” Clint said, disappointed, wincing a little and adjusting the volume on his aids as Bucky jogged over to open a couple of windows. 

“I’m sorry, Clint.” He shoved at the window, which was exactly as stubborn as anything belonging to Clint Barton was obliged to be. “That was -”

“Worth more than fancy pizza,” Clint cut in, frisbeeing the poor remains of their dinner so it landed neatly on top of Lucky’s bowl. “It’s fine, I’ll order in, Slice Slice Baby has my card on file.” He grins, slow and dark-eyed. “And they take at least a half hour to deliver, if you’re up for a little more distraction.” 


	70. Chapter 70

“Pretty sure you’re not supposed to do that in public.” 

The voice was low, amused, still not quite familiar, since Barnes tended to stay quiet unless he was quietly making asshole comments about practically everything Steve did. Clint liked him already. 

“Pretty sure anyone out here this time of night is up to something that deserves an arrow in the ass.” 

He pulled out another arrow, putty-tipped, and fired it into the darkness, not needing to see the tree to know it’d flown true. He’d been at the range until they’d chucked him out, and he hadn’t been ready to go back to the tower; Tony had set him up with Chloe, Clarissa, Chlamydia, whatever her name was, and admitting that he’d been stood up wasn’t something he was looking forward to. 

“Including you?” Barnes asked. 

“Including  _you_ ,” Clint said, and released the tension on the string, putting his last putty arrow back in the quiver. 

“Big words for a little dick,” Barnes said - fuck it, Bucky, no way Clint was being formal with a guy with that glint in his eye. 

“Fuck you,” Clint said with a grin, “my dick is plenty adequate.” 

“Ringing endorsement,” Bucky circled around from where he’d approached, coming into Clint’s sight line with an asshole smirk of his own. 

“What, you want the Amazon reviews?” 

“Dick adequate,” Bucky said, his eyes dropping, “but that  _ass_  gets two thumbs  _way_ up.” 

“Always liked a man who knows his way around foreplay.” 

Bucky was full on grinning now, hair tucked behind one ear so Clint could see the beautifully cut line of his jaw. 

“Amazing what you learn in the army,” he said, and Clint turned to look at him, a slow up and down that didn’t even shoot for subtle. 

“Wanna handle some privates?” he said, full beaming grin and waggling eyebrows for effect, and Bucky choked on a laugh, the permanent lines that were etched between his brows smoothing out for a moment. 

Beat a blind date, any day.


	71. Chapter 71

Clint’s battered and bruised but beaming as Steve finishes up his faithful rendition of Wonder Woman’s cuffs on the casts on both his wrists. He blows gently over the Sharpie ink to dry it, then crosses his arms over his chest for a picture, because he’s an idiot and Tony’ll do anything for Instagram. 

“Hold still,” Tony says, and Clint’s gamely grinning along but Bucky can see the lines of strain that’re etching themselves in at the corner of his eyes. 

“Okay, enough with the attention-seeking,” he says, inwardly kicking himself when it’s Clint who gets caught in the bitching fall-out zone, his face falling. Bucky brushes a hand gently across his hair on his way to ushering Steve and Tony out of their rooms, a silent apology. 

“Sorry,” Clint says when he comes back in, and Bucky tips his head back, runs a hand through his hair and down to cup the nape of his neck as he looks at Clint. 

“You got nothing to apologise for, darlin’,” he says, “just figured give you a month and you’ll regret anyone seeing you with that thing on your face.”

Clint almost bashes himself in the face as his hand comes up automatically to scratch at his chin. He and Steve have been having some kinda ill-advised beard-off, and much as he loves the man Bucky has to admit that while Steve looks like some kinda English-professor single-dad sex-demon, Clint mostly looks like a bum. 

“It itches like a son of a bitch,” he confesses, making a resigned face that Bucky’s a sucker for, ‘cos it grinds on him how easy Clint accepts when things ain’t right for him. 

“C’mon,” he says, jerking his head towards the bathroom. By the time Clint’s limped his way over, Bucky’s filled the basin with gently steaming water and he’s wringing out a hand towel. Clint awkwardly uses the edge of his cast to push the toilet lid down and carefully sits, smiling kinda soft and fond as Bucky tucks a towel around his shoulders and tips him back a little, cradling the back of Clint’s neck as he tilts his head back enough that the hot towel won’t fall right back off again. 

Bucky wets his shaving brush and starts working up a pine-scented lather. Clint always makes fun of him for being old-fashioned, preferring his foam to come outta a steel can, but he’s quiet and compliant as Bucky tosses the towel into the bathtub and gently works the brush over his face. Bucky’s using his metal hand for that part so he can feel the warmth of Clint’s skin as he tilts his head a little, brushes his thumb against his temple. 

Clint hums softly when Bucky moves down to his neck, his eyes falling half-closed, and it probably ain’t the most appropriate time to be getting hard but Bucky’s never had much truck with social convention. There’s no urgency to it in any case, just a faint buzz of arousal that’s linked directly to Clint easy under his hands, the low groan he lets out when Bucky brushes along the line of his jaw. 

He puts the brush down with a gentle click of wood against ceramic, and grips the handle of the razor but doesn’t go to pick it up. 

“You scared the shit outta me,” he says, quiet against the background of the bathroom fan. 

Clint hums again, familiar two-tone intonation, and Bucky turns and leans back against the counter. 

“You don’t have to apologise,” he says, a little snappy, “I’m not gonna stop you from doing your job. I just -” he breathes out, long and slow, and hitches his mouth into half a smile that’s only telling half a lie. “You scared the shit outta me, Barton.” 

He walks back over and Clint tilts up into it when Bucky leans down to press a kiss against his forehead, the kind of sappy shit that he’d never do outside of these rooms. Words’re too heavy right now, and he’d rather wait until Clint can answer back, but the three words he’s been carrying around heavy as lead since that wall fell where Clint was standing, since, if he’s honest, weeks earlier than that, they ease up a little when he pulls away and the lather’s all crooked where Clint is smiling. 


	72. Chapter 72

Tony poked at the gauntlet thoughtfully, only half listening to Clint. To be fair, half his attention was still a pretty substantial amount, and if he was getting paid to do this he’d own Clint’s building about seven times over by now. 

“You’re sure?” Clint asked, and Tony looked up at him, squinting against the sunlight. 

“I am 100% positive that his arm is waterproof, yes.” 

Clint chewed on his lip, thoughtfully, and Tony rolled his eyes and wished he still had staff at the mansion, ‘cos he could really go for some kinda ice-based dessert right about now, and playing on Clint’s guilt complex was apparently ‘bullying’. 

“Okay, so how about the chlorine?” Clint asked, his brow furrowed with genuine concern. “That’s not gonna cause him any problems down the line, right?” 

“Like what?” 

“I dunno!” Clint spread his hands, dramatic movement showing how much he was working himself up over this. “I’m not the science guy, Tony. Rusting? Pitting?”

“Okay first,” Tony said, gesturing emphatically with the screwdriver, “I am offended that you think I’d build  _anything_  that could rust when exposed to something as pathetic as chlorinated water, and second -”

“Yeah, yeah,” Clint said, “blah blah never question your genius, blah.” He shot Tony a wide open smile that kinda took him aback for a second, made him realize how rare it was. “Thanks, Tony.” 

“The hell was that about,” Tony muttered under his breath, then heard a whoop. 

“EAT POOL, ASSHOLE!” 

There was a huge splash, enormous enough to soak dark spots into the fabric of Tony’s robe. From the pool there was more frantic splashing, then Barnes’ furious swearing as Clint cackled madly, retreating into the distance. 

Someone seriously had to have a word with that guy about healthy ways to express a goddamn interest. 


	73. Chapter 73

The regular smack of a baseball against palms punctuates the conversation, familiar voices low and easy, soaked through with the warm exhaustion of a good workout. 

“I don’t know if crowds are a great idea,” Steve says, and there’s a soft noise of assent. Bucky’s got pretty used to recognising Clint when he’s sub-verbal, and he pauses just outside the doorway, curious what his two favorite people have to discuss. 

Clint clicks his tongue, way he always does when he’s thinking. 

“Okay, so no baseball, no football -”

“You could maybe go for a batting cage?” Steve offers. “He was always playing stickball with the neighborhood kids.” 

“You think he’ll react well to balls flying at his face?” 

“Well if he doesn’t,” Steve says, a soft grunt of effort as he tosses the ball back, “that’s gotta be tough for your social life.” 

He grunts again, the smack of baseball against palm considerably louder, and laughs while a couple of gentle thuds suggest that throw pillows are following the baseball over. 

“You’re an asshole, Steven Rogers,” Clint says, and his tone is admiring more than anything. 

“An asshole with a date,” Steve says, rustle of clothing as he gets up, heads over towards the elevators. “See you later.”

Clint grunts acknowledgement, tossing the ball up and catching it, and Bucky can just picture him, the way he’ll have tipped his head back against the back of the chair, slouched down with one battered sneaker resting on the coffee table. He walks through the door on silent feet, reaching out to catch the baseball before it can drop into Clint’s hand. 

His smile is beautiful, even upside down, and Bucky bends over far enough that he can kiss Clint, clumsy and perfect. 

“I’ll do pretty much anything,” he says, “so long as it’s with you.” 


	74. Chapter 74

Look, Clint’s not  _scared_  of the Winter Soldier, he’s just got a healthy respect for the guy, okay? 

Thing is, the Soldier is the story that’s told to little baby assassins when they’re tucked up into bed at night, and whether it’s a good story or a bad story depends on who’s doing the telling; no one can deny that the man has _skills_. And yeah, maybe little baby Clint had nursed a little baby crush, but that had lasted until Tasha had showed him her scar and told him her story, ‘cos there’s very little that’s attractive about a man without mercy. 

Of course, now he’s gotten to know a little of the history there, he’s learned that Bucky Barnes was never exactly in the Soldier’s driving seat, and Bucky Barnes has eyes that can look into your very soul and make it pant for him, so. Clint’s kinda conflicted. 

Feelings are hard, okay? This is why he prefers pizza. 

“Four cheeses,” he says, a low mutter that’s getting a little frantic with the repetition, “margherita, meat lovers, sloopy Giuseppe, meateor, Hawaiian, fuck the veggie supreme. Four cheeses, margherita, meat -”

“Love it if you’d quit with the recitation, Tweetie Pie,” Tony says, abrupt and kinda pissy over the ear piece. 

“We are all of us hungry, friend archer,” Thor agrees, “yet once we are done here we will feast like kings.” 

“Hawkeye’s just  _really_  into pizza,” Natasha says, a little smirk in her voice ‘cos she knows him way too well, and they both know what pizza’s code for, right now. 

It’s hard (aheh) enough on a regular mission. Bucky’s the bad boy of the superhero biz, leather jacket and metal arm and a focused intensity to his walk that has led to several very satisfying showers. Bucky’s hair brushes Bucky’s jaw-line in a way that Clint is deeply envious of, and he’s mentioned his eyes, right? Jesus  _Christ_ , Bucky’s eyes. 

But right now he’s lying on his front on a rooftop, six foot somethin’ of murderous intent, and there’s a tiny ginger kitten that’s butting up against his ear, mewling demandingly for Winter Soldier scritches. 

“Quattro fuckin’ fromagio,” Clint curses. 


	75. Chapter 75

“Holy shit don’t _do_ that!”

Clint collapses back against his apartment door, clutching at his chest, and maybe it’s a little over dramatic but he challenges anyone not to react the same way when they find an assassin in the shadows.

“Should I just give you a key?”

The Soldier frowns, processing for a second.

“Why?”

It’s a fair question. It’s not like he’s ever had any problems getting in.

“So why are you here?” Clint makes his way over to the kitchen counter, dumps the paper bag and transfers the six-pack straight over to the refrigerator. “Should I have stocked up on bandages at CVS or…?”

“I’m good,” the Soldier says, which is maybe a sign of how much he’s been around lately - ‘functioning optimally,’ when coming out of a mouth Clint’s been kinda fantasising about, that's just creepy. “Are you?”

This, this is a new thing they’ve been working on, basic conversation skills. Clint hasn’t quite sunk to the level of scooby snax, but he does crack the Soldier open a beer. (Their fingers brush a little when he hands it over. He’s trying not to think about it.)

Clint hesitates for a second, lets out a breath.

“Sure,” he says. “I’m fine.”

The Soldier regards him for a moment, almost makes something that looks like an expression.

“Sure,” he echoes, and his voice is flat and toneless and still somehow calling Clint a liar. Without another word, he turns on his heel and heads for the window, climbing out with an effortless economy of motion that may or may not stick Clint’s tongue to the roof of his mouth.

Clint swears under his breath, not sure what he’s done but sure he regrets it. He lifts his head, startled, when the Soldier climbs carefully back through.

He’s got a cardboard box in his hands that he carries right over to Clint, and it’s making tiny cheeping noises like baby birds or -

“Kittens?” He gapes down at them, trying to process how the fuck this became his life.

“You - looked sad,” the Soldier says, as awkward as he’s ever been.

“We talked about you following me,” Clint says absently, but the little black one is _yawning_  and he just can’t summon the required level of pissed.


	76. Chapter 76

“…seriously?” Clint says, kinda incredulous, as yet another woman takes one look at him and hurries off in the other direction. Steve’s got a queue that stretches around the block; Tony bribed Rhodey to replace him five minutes in and his might be even _longer_ ; even Bruce has had a respectable showing.

Clint, whose idea this had freaking _been_? Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

He hauls himself up onto the wooden counter and kicks his heels, feeling kinda sorry for himself. Sure, he’s aware that he doesn’t make much of a showing against _actual superheroes_ , but no one?

There’s a glint of metal in the distance and he perks up a little, figuring that there’s got to be some perks to being in an actual committed relationship, but all Bucky has done so far is stand nearby and glare at anyone who looks like they might dare to approach.

He looks Clint up and down, taking in the slumped posture and the empty jar that was _supposed_ to hold his takings. The genuine amusement stings.

“Yeah, okay,” Clint says dolefully, “you’re the only one crazy enough to wanna kiss me. Don’t rub it in.”

“You’re an idiot,” Bucky tells him flatly, and pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket, shoving it into Clint’s jar.

“An IOU?” Clint asks, offended. “You can’t give a kissing boo- oh wow. That’s a _lot_ of zeroes.”

“Yup,” Bucky tells him, matter of fact, and bends so he can shove his metal shoulder into Clint’s middle, hauling him over his shoulder and stalking away from the booth.

 

 


	77. Chapter 77

Bucky was sitting curled up on the floor when Clint got back, which wasn’t on its own a cause for concern; Clint had found him far weirder places. He didn’t lift his head, though, just grunted a greeting, his hands buried in Lucky’s fur. Lucky was draped across his lap, blissful and half asleep, his tail thumping lazily against the floor, and Lucky mostly preferred his bed in the corner on everything but the bad days. 

“Aaw, Buck,” Clint said, and left the groceries on the couch, dropping down to sit by Bucky and curling a careful arm around his shoulders. “What did I say about watching it without me, huh?” 

“Sorry,” Bucky said, dragging in a snotty breath and scrubbing a hand across his eyes. “I know I shoulda waited -”

“I’ve seen it a million times.” Clint spoke fast, dismissive, wanting Bucky to understand that that really wasn’t the issue. He ached to tilt Bucky’s chin up, to wipe his thumb under his eyes, but Bucky wasn’t there yet. Even this was progress, to find him still here, to find him willing to be touched. “I just didn’t want you -” he gestured vaguely. 

“A fuckin’ mess,” Bucky said. 

“I couldn’t even get to the end, the first time.” Clint let his hand drift up to rest on the back of Bucky’s head and Bucky moved with it, leaning in until their temples were resting together. “When Chance and Sassy are back, and Peter’s just waiting -”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, his voice thick. “Yeah, I couldn’t - I turned it off.” 

“Aaw,  _Buck_ ,” Clint said, “ _sweetheart_.” He turned his head so he could press a kiss to Bucky’s cheekbone, could taste salt on his lips. “C’mon on back on the couch, okay?”

“Why?”

But Clint was already pushing a little at Lucky, who was always quick to take a hint. He awkwardly got to his feet and held out his hands to Bucky, who regarded him through red-rimmed eyes. 

“C’mon,” Clint said, “you trust me, right? I swear, this one’s worth sticking with right through ‘til the end.” 

“Yeah,” Bucky said, something odd in his voice. “Yeah, I’m starting to get that.”


	78. Chapter 78

Bucky’s already named the kitten, so Clint’s aware that he’s fucked. 

Admittedly, he’s called it Dum-Dum, but he insists that it’s a term of affection - at least, that’s what he says every time he’s said it to Clint. 

They’ve had a grace period, a couple days when Lucky’s been at Katie-Kate’s, selfies of beach walks and dumb sunglasses, some kinda fashion show involving the dog. It’s been for the best, ‘cos they’ve had the time to get used to the kitten crying outside the door, to get the kitten used to sleeping in the fancy-ass bed Bucky bought for her. Bucky had been kinda distracted, at first, had wanted to let her in, but Clint had had to experience the full glory of a soaking wet Bucky Barnes, with rainwater lovingly tracing the line of his neck, curled protectively over a tiny sad kitten. He had a freaking  _mission_ , okay, and he managed to distract Bucky pretty goddamn thoroughly by the time he was through. 

Grace period is over, though. Kate’s brought the dog back, and this is the crunch time, and Clint’s not gonna lie he’s a little invested in the outcome of this. Because he’s honestly not sure if Bucky would pick him over the kitten, at this point, but he’s worryingly convinced that Bucky would win out over Lucky, and that’s not something he thought he would  _ever_  say. 

So Clint’s crouching down holding Lucky’s collar, his fingers curled tight, when Bucky comes down the stairs. He’s forgotten to wear a shirt, and his little grin says he’s noticing that Clint’s noticing that he’s forgotten to wear a damn shirt, and his washed-gray sweatpants are barely sticking to his hips. 

And curled up in his metal hand, peering curiously through lethal fingers, the tiny calico kitten that he’d climbed into a storm drain to save. She’s purring fit to bust, Clint can hear her from all the way over here, and there’s a distinct possibility that Clint’s gonna die from it. It’ll make for a good eulogy. 

Lucky cocks his head to one side and Clint wraps an arm around him, holding tight, fingers buried in his fur. 

“Hey,” he says, all soft and soothing, “hey buddy, we’re gonna stay calm, right? We’re gonna just sit here all gentle and quiet, and we’re gonna be really really still, and we’re not gonna eat the tiny kitten and make Bucky hate us forever, okay?”

Bucky comes to a halt, almost close enough to touch, and he extends his hand a little. Definitely not close enough for Lucky to reach, but close enough he can strain forward and sniff, can open his mouth wide in a beaming grin. The kitten looks haughtily unconcerned about the giant scruffy hairy thing that’s staring at her - and she doesn’t seem that bothered by the dog, either. 

“Tentative success?” 

“Tentative success,” Bucky answers, and he crouches down so he can bring Dum-Dum a little closer, so Lucky can sniff over her head. He’s always been good with other animals, and Clint had been mostly sure it’d be okay, but he still lets out a sigh of relief when Dum-Dum curls up in Bucky’s palm and to all appearances, goes to sleep. 

Lucky rests his chin on Bucky’s fingers, watching the tiny ball of fluff, and Clint grins up at Bucky, gentle and close. 

“Think he’s in love,” he says, and Bucky lets out a breath. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Might be.” 


	79. Chapter 79

Clint dropped onto the couch, remembering too late about the electrical burns on his side and wincing, jerking upright. Behind him he could hear Bucky squelching across to the kitchen, to the pile of clean laundry on one of the bar stools, and he let out a long breath and rubbed a hand over his face and back through his hair. 

“Well,” he said. “That sucked.” 

It had started so damn  _well_ , too. Clint had chosen his clothes carefully: grey suit, thin tie, pocket square - all a little bit Dean Martin, a little bit suave. When you’re dating a genuine wartime pin-up it’s a hell of a boost to the ego to leave him speechless, and Clint had attempted a little spin and a glide to get over to Bucky, to reach up and gently push his mouth closed for him.  

Bucky had been a little more casual, black pants and a sinfully soft black knitted sweater, his hair tied back at the base of his neck. Still the most beautiful thing Clint’d ever seen, and letting that slide out all over-earnest and embarrassing had been worth it for the way it’d brought a little pink into Bucky’s cheeks. 

Clint’d pulled out all the stops, ‘cos this thing - if you counted the way Clint counted, from first kisses and shared grins, and ignored the part where they fucked around and never quite got to putting a name on it - this thing had lasted a year, now. He’d planned dinner, and drinks, and dancing, and hadn’t thought to plan for giant goddamn robots and an evil genius, ‘cos he was an idiot and an optimist, and had foolishly decided that life owed him a break. 

There was a gentle  _splat_  as Bucky discarded his clothes in the sink, and then the rustle of fabric as he pulled on sweatpants and one of Clint’s purple shirts. Then he rounded the couch and extended a hand, resisting when Clint tried to pull him down next to him. 

“Pretty sure you promised me dancing,” he said with a little grin, the hopelessly earnest one that had a direct line into Clint’s chest, tugging hard and causing all sorts of havoc in there. 

“Way tonight’s going, I’ll probably break your leg,” Clint warned, hauling himself to his feet with a little supersoldier assistance that overbalanced him, sent him straight into Bucky’s arms. 

“That’ll just make it easier, fallin’ for you,” Bucky said, and Clint gaped at him a second. 

“Holy shit, Barnes,” he said, genuinely awed. “That was  _smooth_.” 

Bucky’s grin spread a little, smug and stupid and satisfied, and he pulled Clint in close, pressing their cheeks together and resting his hand warm and firm right in the small of Clint’s back. Wasn’t much more than a shuffle, barest movement in the low light, and Clint opened his mouth and crooned, gentle and low, 

_“ I’m a sentimental sap, that’s all  
What’s the use of trying not to fall?”_


	80. Chapter 80

“Holy -” Clint’s voice was hushed, awed. “Holy shit, who  _made_  this?” 

He took another sip, and it was only then that he noticed the guy sitting at the table, sipping from his own mug of the goddamn heavenly coffee and smirking. 

“It’s not real coffee unless it’s climbing the sides of the mug,” he said, and Clint had no idea what the hell his face was doing but the guy’s smile widened, which was just unfair to the structural integrity of Clint’s heart. And pants. 

“Marry me?” Clint said, pathetic and hopeful, clutching his mug to his chest like it was all that was keeping him alive. 

The guy looked him up and down, gray eyes sharp and thoughtful and smile turning wicked. 

“No can do, but I’ll suck you off if you give me one of the croissants Steve says you’re hiding.” 

The man himself entered the room at that point, pinching the bridge of his nose in what looked like genuine pain. 

“Bucky, you are not in the goddamned army any more, you can’t just  _say_  shit like that.” 

Bucky - what the hell kinda name was Bucky? - grinned. 

“Just did.” He dropped a wink at Clint, slouched back in his seat, crossed his legs at the ankle; he looked, in short, like the embodiment of dirty back-alley sex, the kind that was so good you sorta hoped it’d kill you. “You in?” 


	81. Chapter 81

Clint was sprawled against one of the walls when Bucky walked in, stripping the film off a fresh pack of cards. Opposite him, against the back of the couch, was a pop tart box, empty of food and full of discarded cards, a joker leering up at Bucky from on top.

The level of focus on Clint’s face would’ve been enough to let Bucky know he was wasted, even without the empty bottles beside him. He looked up, comically surprised, when Bucky slid down the wall next to him, crossing his arms on top of his raised knees.

“So I’m guessin’ the date didn’t go so good?” He said.

Clint shrugged and flicked a card that dropped straight into the box, no rebound.

“Wouldn’t know,” he said, “I thought it went okay, but apparently she’s not looking for dating right now.”

“So she went out with you, why?”

Clint snorted and flicked another card.

“Can you ask for feedback, you think? Like after a job interview.” He tapped his card against his teeth, thoughtful. “Not that I’ve had one of those, either.”

“You’d just get the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ spiel,” Bucky said, and Clint rolled his head against the wall to look at him, fuzzy and kinda sad.

“You think?” He asked.

“Well it’s sure as hell nothing wrong with you,” he said, and his voice had dropped to something low and intimate without his say-so, something that gave too much away.


	82. Chapter 82

Tony was off at some fancy party thing, and Tasha regarded 4am pizza as some kinda abomination. Everyone else was superpowered, or a god, so it was just Clint that got hit with the food poisoning, hunched over the toilet bowl and praying for death. 

“Well this is more familiar than I’d like it,” said a voice from the doorway, and Clint groaned and spat and slumped a little more. 

“If you could just. Just not. That’d be great.” 

Bucky picked his way into the room, making his way past Clint’s crumpled and sweat-stained sweater and filling the glass that was by the sink. 

“Here,” he said, and handed over the glass, and Clint moved carefully to sit beside the toilet, resting his head back against the cold tile wall and shivering a little. 

“I coulda got that,” he said, and Bucky rolled his eyes. 

“Yeah yeah, you don’t need anyone, you can do it all yourself, I know the drill.” 

“So you can go then,” Clint said, and yeah, okay, that was a little abrupt, but seeing your sometime fuck-buddy puking his guts up was a pretty good way to make sure it was a no-time no-how fuck-buddy situation, and Clint was a little too hung up already to want that to happen any time soon. It was inevitable he’d screw it up sooner than later, but he’d rather something a little more suave than Giovanni’s finest coming between them. 

Bucky shoved up to his feet and walked out, wordless, and Clint felt a little like crying, in the way that only stupid helpless sickness made you. He washed out his mouth and spat in to the toilet, then sipped carefully, slowly, desperate to call this done and go to bed. 

He had his eyes shut, and Bucky was an assassin and all, so the first thing he knew about the guy’s return was the draping of soft fluffiness around his shoulders. Bucky cupped the back of his neck and gently propped him up a little, so he could properly wrap the blanket around, and then brushed sweaty hair away from his face. 

Clint ducked down into the blanket, ‘cos now he  _really_  felt like crying, like a little kid that wanted their mom, and he couldn’t let Bucky see that. 

“Hey,” Bucky said, low and painfully gentle, and he squashed himself in next to Clint, rubbed gentle circles against his back, pulled him in until Clint was leaning against him. 

“You don’t haveta -”

Bucky cut him off. 

“Yeah, I do. You and Stevie, man. I’m a sucker for tragic blonds.”


	83. Chapter 83

“How much of that did you hear?” 

There was a slight movement by his foot, but no other acknowledgement. Clint slid down the wall to sit, reaching over with one hand to pet gently, like that was gonna make this any better. 

“Look, you gotta know, me and your dad - we love each other, okay? No matter how much we shout, that’s always gonna be…” He sighed, and his hand fell still. “No matter how much I screw up.”

Clint let out a long breath and leaned his head back against the wall. 

“‘cos I screwed up, and I can acknowledge that. I do  _get_  that. I’m just not -” his chin was rough when he scratched at it: a night on the couch, cleaning up in the guest bathroom. “I’m not so good when people are yelling. Brings out the stubborn, and once that happens I can’t pull it back until we’re done. And I can’t -” 

He let the silence tick by for a time. 

“Done’s never gonna come from me. Not with your dad. I’ll die before I’m done with him.” 

There was a mutter of low swearing from the kitchen, and Clint bit his lip. 

“How much of that did you hear?” he said. 

“Quit talking to the Roomba, you asshole,” Bucky said, “and come here and kiss me.” 


	84. Chapter 84

“I can’t keep kissing strangers and pretending that they’re you.” 

Bucky jerked upright, almost kneeing Clint in the head as he glared down at him accusingly, then across at Steve. 

“And how many missions require you kissin’ other people, huh?” 

Steve rolled his eyes and flipped a page in the newspaper, rustling it as he settled back in front of himself. 

“ _None_ ,” he said. 

“Hey!” Clint protested, genuinely pissed now. “And how the hell else was I supposed to react to that heiress with the backstory you gave me?” 

Steve squinted thoughtfully. “…okay, maybe one. But we’re a man down until you agree to a debriefing with Coulson, Buck, you know -” 

“And that security guy,” Clint continued, on a roll now, “that was - you didn’t pull him off me for at least a minute, and I  _heard_  you taking pictures, asshole.” 

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky growled, and Clint got a little shiver of sensation deep in his gut, always a little ashamed of the way he reacted when Bucky got protective. 

“Yeah, okay -”

“And Maria Flores,” Clint said helpfully. 

“For god’s sake, Clint, she was  _five_.” 

“And  _very demanding_ ,” Clint said. 

“Fuck you, Stevie,” Bucky said, and slid out from under Clint, and for all the anger in his voice he still made sure to shove a cushion in his place. “I’m talkin’ to Coulson. No way you guys are going out without me again.” 

“You see me arguing?” Steve asked, pushing himself out of the armchair and following. He made sure Bucky was out of sight before gently slapping Clint’s raised palm. 


	85. Chapter 85

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> High school AU

Clint is all whispered words and interwoven fingers and Bucky gets the inexplicable urge - no matter how uncomfortable he is right now, physically, emotionally - to laugh. If only ‘cos maybe it’ll stop him from crying. 

It’s not - it doesn’t  _hurt_ , not exactly, but it doesn’t feel  _good_  yet, although if the way Clint’s breathing is any indication, he’s getting something out of it at least. But Bucky’s not used to this. He doesn’t know how to deal with someone being so gentle with him, ‘cos most people look at him and see someone who could kick their asses. 

And Clint sees that, too - Clint knows full well that Bucky could kick his ass, ‘cos he’s  _done_  it, and Clint is a little shit so no doubt he’ll do it again. But Clint’s maybe the first person who’s looked past that. Someone who took him to the carnival and won him bullshit prizes, someone who held his hand, someone who could see under the glare to the places he was hurting. 

Bucky shifts under Clint, arching his back a little, ‘cos the friction of it all is causing a kind of heat inside him, and it’s starting to feel - it’s not - he doesn’t have words for it, but he’s so goddamn glad he’s doing this with  _Clint_. He lifts one hand - when did he start shaking? - and wraps it around the back of Clint’s neck, pushing back a little with Clint’s movements. 

“Ah,  _fuck_ ,” Clint whispers, “aaw,  _Buck_.” And that does pull a little giggle out of him, one that Clint captures in his mouth, panting unevenly against his lips in place of an actual kiss. Bucky pushes up a little to deepen the kiss and then keens, sudden and fuckin’ loud, ‘cos all of a sudden Clint’s all pressed up against something inside him that - 

Holy  _shit_. 

Clint grins against his mouth, tilts his hips just right that he can lay him down and still hit that spot that’s tightening everything up inside his belly, that’s pushing him towards -

“Clint,” he says, breathless and helpless and, “Clint, baby, fuck, I love you,” and Clint’s eyes go wide and his movement stutters and Bucky is gonna make fun of him forever for this ‘cos - ‘cos that’s what you do with the things that are too goddamn important to treat seriously, the feeling of Clint jerking inside him, the feel of his hand wrapped around Bucky, the way everything else in the universe fucking fades. 

Clint holds him close before he pulls out, tucks his face against the side of Bucky’s neck, his nose stirring the sweat damp hair. And his breathing is ragged in a way that’s maybe not just exertion, and Bucky gets that, his eyes stinging as he breathes a laugh into Clint’s hair. 


	86. Chapter 86

The last DoomBot goes down in a shower of sparks and Clint whoops, throwing his arms in the air. 

“FORTY SEVEN, BABY,” he yells, ‘cos everyone had heard his comms die with a sad fizzle when he got chucked in the harbor. “EAT MY BEAUTIFUL PURPLE ASS!”

“That’s what you were gonna ask for?” Bucky asks, “‘cos I hate to break it to ya sugar but I got forty eight.” 

“Okay one, bullshit you did,” Clint says. “you don’t even have your rifle, and b) that wasn’t the prize I had in mind, actually.” He blurts it out all brazen, but there’s this odd sorta look in his eyes, maybe a little like relief. 

“Found a grenade launcher,” Bucky says, “forty eight. What were you gonna -”

“You won,” Clint interrupts, and there’s a little pink in his cheeks which has Bucky all kinds of intrigued. “Dealer’s choice.” 

“Okay,” Bucky says. “Last night you had my tongue up your ass, the hell has you all -”

Clint goes all steel-eyed and focused in a way that’s hot as hell, and Bucky has all of a millisecond to wonder if he’s gonna get punched before Clint grabs an arrow out of his quiver and lunges forward, burying it in the eye socket of a ‘Bot that’s fizzing and crackling where it had already taken one of Bucky’s rounds to the chest. 

“Huh,” Bucky says. “Forty seven, then, I guess.”

“Aaw,” Clint says almost too soft to hear. “Forty  _eight_.” 

“So,” Bucky says, while he ducks down to check that the ‘Bot’s actually  _destroyed_  this time, ‘cos he’s not sure Clint wants him to see his face. “What’s the prize?” 

He can see the uncomfortable movement out the corner of his eye, the way Clint’s rubbing the back of his neck the way he does when he’s feeling uncertain. 

“I, er.” Clint scuffs his toe against the rooftop. “It’s not something we’ve - you can say no.” 

“That’s always been the deal,” Bucky says, “I haven’t forgot.” 

Clint lets out a breath, quick and unsteady. 

“I want you to kiss me,” he says. 


	87. Chapter 87

Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose, and he hoped it looked like ‘I am done with your bullshit and about ready to kill you’ rather than what it actually was. He took a few paces away, ran a hand through his hair and unobtrusively tapped his comm. 

“Clint,” he said, voice low, “get off the damned playground equipment.” 

“Aaw,” Clint said, and Bucky watched as his shirt gave up the battle with gravity and flopped over his face. “But -”

“How exactly are you watching my ass when you’re upside down on the monkey bars?” 

“I’m always watching your ass, baby,” Clint said, upside down finger guns and all. 

Bucky let out a heavy sigh and returned to his contact, who was still looking shifty and uncomfortable just from the force of Bucky’s glare. 

“The name?” he said, low and implacable. 

“Look, I - this isn’t some sort of - don’t you have something to offer in exchange? I’m putting my job - quite possibly my  _life_  on the line for this, and I -”

“ _Name_ ,” Bucky said, and the man let out a soft whimper. 

He was going for the intimidating stare, but Clint had apparently made a friend; he was doing chin-ups on the side of the jungle gym with a kid sitting on his bent legs. She was tiny and solemn and had a little butterfly pinned to the end of every thin braid, and she sat on Clint’s lap with all the confidence of a queen on her throne. 

Something in Bucky’s chest was kinda sore, a sweet and warm and expansive ache that had him struggling not to soften. 

“I must insist that -”

“You insist all you like,” Bucky said, “and I’ll show you exactly how many ways I can make you beg for mercy without any of these nice people noticing.” 

Four. He was pretty sure four. Five, if the ice-cream van had enough ice. 

“I - I -”

The guy was panicking now, and somewhere in the distance Clint was playing some kinda clapping game that ended abruptly as he launched to his feet, taking a few strides away, nocking an arrow quicker than a heart beat and letting it fly even as Bucky caught the flash of silver and knocked the knife out of the guy’s hand. Clint’s taser arrow caught him in the back of his neck, and Bucky zip-tied his hands together and headed over to where Clint was apparently getting mobbed. 

“It’s okay, mom,” Clint’s tiny friend was saying, “he’s a ‘venger.” 

“I swear I’m a professional,” Clint said. He fumbled in his pocket and held up the official cards Tony’d made them after one too many incidents like this. “Got a license and everything.” 

“C’mon, d-ink,” Bucky said, grabbing Clint by the upper arm and tugging gently, “we gotta get him back to base.” 

“Sorry,” Clint said, and waved at his tiny friend with a grin. “Coulson’s gonna have my ass, huh?” 

“Nope,” Bucky said, stopping briefly to haul the guy over his shoulder, “got dibs.” 


	88. Chapter 88

“Was this all just a game to you?” 

Clint looked a little like he’d been smacked around the head, which wasn’t so unusual for him when it came to relationship talk. 

“Woah, what?” he said, hands raised and baby blues wide and injured, and Bucky just took another long drink of his beer, wishing idly for something harder. 

This one was called Erika, she was a nurse, she was tall and beautiful and smart, and Tony and Sam had been betting how long it was gonna last, this time, ‘cos Clint’s track record was a demolition derby. Right now she looked furious, and she poked a finger into Clint’s chest. 

“Look, if you’re poly, that was all you had to say. It’s not for me but I don’t have a  _problem_  with it -”

“Wait -” but she was on a roll, and Clint was bulldozed, mouth open and expression lost. Bucky winced a little and look away. 

“- but I do take fucking exception to you asking me on a date and then bringing your  _boyfriend.”_

Helpless, his eyes snapped back up to Clint’s face, and this time he looked - he looked  _wrecked_. His eyes moved automatically to meet Bucky’s, and Bucky couldn’t even begin to work out what the hell he was seeing in there; whatever it was Clint didn’t want him to see it, if the way his eyes dropped was any indication. 

“Look,” he said, “Erika, I think you’ve got the wrong - we’re not -  _he’s_  not -”

“ _He’s_  not,” she repeated, precise and cold, like she was picking up the word with tweezers. “But you are, right?” 

All of the fight just drained right outta Clint and he slumped down into the chair opposite Bucky, dropping his head into his hands. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hissed out, more a lost breath than anything, like someone had just punched him right in the gut. Erika looked at him for a moment, shook her head and grabbed her bag. 

“Nice meeting you, James,” she said, her tone cutting like a knife. 

“Just - just give me a second,” Clint mumbled, “one second, and I’ll -”

“You’re a fuckin’ idiot,” Bucky told him, pissed as hell and still somehow smiling, not sure whether to smack him or kiss his stupid face. 

“I  _know_ ,” Clint said into the palms of his hands, “I tried not to but -” 

“Not for that,” Bucky said, and he hooked his foot around the back of Clint’s ankle and yanked, knocking him off balance so he finally looked up. So he finally saw the grin on Bucky’s face. 

“You owe Erika some goddamn flowers,” Bucky told him, draining his beer. “And from now on, no dating anyone but me.” 


	89. Chapter 89

Steve was attempting to ease him into the outside world, one step at a time. He’d started with libraries, little coffee shops, independent record stores, places where people could keep to themselves and interaction was optional. 

After that it was museums, art galleries, guided tours and Sam setting him goals like ‘ask about prices’ and ‘introduce yourself to someone’ and ‘say something pretentious about art’. Sam was always setting him goals, ‘cos Sam was a dick. 

Today it was the aquarium, and Steve hadn’t been satisfied with them just wandering around the dimly lit corridors, no. Steve insisted Bucky buy them tickets for the show, that he make at least three choices about where to sit, whether to get snacks, whatever. Bucky almost punched the spotty kid behind the counter in the face, admittedly, but he got it done, and - 

Okay, so he’d been reluctantly impressed. One of the guys was practically an acrobat, freckled and sun-bleached blond, demonstrating the tricks he wanted the sea-lion to try and turning it into a kind of comedy routine, dropping shit and getting it stolen and tumbling over things. Bucky’d got a little distracted watching him move, watching how well he filled out the sleeveless wetsuit, and Steve’d been watching him with a smirk when he’d finally dragged his attention away. 

Steve was following a tour, now, some kinda timeline of the ocean, and Bucky was… possibly lost. He wasn’t committed to it, yet, ‘cos he thought he recognised the corridor up ahead, but there was a possibility he hadn’t been meant to go through that unmarked closed door - 

“I’m a shaaaaaark,” someone was tonelessly singing, accompanied by the slapping of a mop, “I’m a shaaaaaark -”

Bucky approached warily, rounding the corner to see the guy who’d been so goddamn flexible at the side of the display pool. He was dressed like all the other aquarium employees now, purple polo and cargo shorts, and the sway of his hips as he bopped with the mop was a little hypnotic. 

“Suck my diiiiiiiiiiiiiiick, I’m a shaaaaaaaaark.”

“Buy me dinner first,” Bucky said, and the guy spun around and abruptly lost his balance, landing ass first in the mop bucket. 


	90. Chapter 90

"Look, this ain’t exactly my wheelhouse,” Bucky said, and Clint moved aside to let him in, still kinda wide-eyed about the flowers that Bucky had thrust at him. He shoved them onto the counter, some of the petals falling off and lying there pathetically, and Bucky debated whether sweeping them into the trash was too metaphorical for words. 

“Okay?” Clint said, and he was looking at Bucky a little like he was crazy, and a little like he was cute, and the combination was - whatever, he was wearing it well. 

“Flowers, candy, dancing.” Bucky shrugged. “That and quick fumbled back-alley fucks, that’s my romantic experience, and maybe I’m an idiot but that ain’t what I want from you.” 

“Pretty sure that’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Clint said, and Bucky gave him the finger but that didn’t stop Clint easing in, sliding his hands onto Bucky’s hips. “No,” he said, and his voice was gentle enough to be a little unfamiliar, like Bucky didn’t recognise it without the teasing. “No, I’m serious,” he said. 

“Yeah, well,” Bucky said, “that’s me. Regular Casanova.”

“Consider me wooed,” Clint said, and pressed a wet kiss to the side of Bucky’s neck, right where a traced tongue’d send a shiver all the way down his spine. 

“You got a vase?” Bucky said, feeling a little like an idiot again but jeez, those things had been five dollars, he didn’t want them to go to waste. 

“Let’s put ‘em in Sam’s room,” Clint said, and Bucky jerked away from him, folding his arms across his chest. 

“Why the hell would I want to -”

Clint grinned, a slow grin, the kind of wicked that promised all kinds of beautiful in the bedroom. 

“‘cos,” he said, “I’m pretty sure he’s allergic.” 

And fuck how cheesy it was, break out the candy, ‘cos Bucky was pretty sure he was in love. 


	91. Chapter 91

“It’s three in the morning.” 

“I know I’m from the past,” Bucky said, “but clocks were still around.” If he was gonna categorise his tone of voice he’d go with maybe ‘pissy’, although an argument could be made for ‘pissed’. 

Clint shuffled a little further into the room, the sweatpants he’d stolen from Bucky flapping around his ankles, tied tight around his narrow waist. He had his arms wrapped across his chest ‘cos Bucky had a comforter and wasn’t gonna spend money he didn’t need to on heat. 

“You gonna come to bed?” 

The cast on Clint’s wrist was bright white in the reflected TV light, and the bruises on his side could be confused for shadows by anyone who wasn’t Bucky, anyone who hadn’t learned every line of them as he waited for Clint to wake. 

“I’m mad at you,” Bucky said, flat and honest, and he refused to be swayed by Clint’s flinch. 

“Yeah, I know,” he said, “I’m sorry.” 

“What, no justification?” Bucky snapped, but it was mostly from surprise, ‘cos Clint didn’t back down like this, not on something he believed was right, not unless someone was telling him the lies about himself that Clint always believed, and that was never something Bucky’d do. 

“Doc said no missions until the cast comes off, I ignored her, I got my ass kicked,” Clint said, which was a pretty accurate summary of events. “Pretty much a dick move.” 

“You’re an asshole,” Bucky muttered, but maybe Clint could hear him relenting ‘cos he drifted a little closer, hooked his fingers around a hank of hair and tucked it behind Bucky’s ear. 

“I’m sorry I scared you,” Clint said, and Bucky reached for the angry denial and found nothing but truth in its place. 


	92. Chapter 92

“Oh god, Buck, no.” Stevie has one hand over his eyes but he’s laughing, mouth wide and crows feet cutting through the rainbow someone’s painted onto his cheek. 

“Sun’s out, guns out,” Bucky says, and hauls his shirt off over his head, shoving it into the back pocket of his shorts. The scars ain’t exactly pretty, but he’s made an effort to make up for it - his abs are a work of freakin’  _art_ , and he’s not afraid to take - heh - pride in that. Stevie’s still rocking the AVER shirt, ‘cos his boy Sam’s a campaigner for American Veterans for Equal Rights when he’s got time to spare from his counseling work; Bucky’s got their star in temporary tat form on what remains of his bicep. 

There’s music and laughter and dancing everywhere, and it’s the polar opposite to what his life has been up to this point. Someone pours glitter over Bucky’s head and he grimaces and shakes as much of it off onto Steve as he can - he’s gonna be shitting that stuff for weeks. Brushing it out of his hair, he looks up to see a group of people in fatigues, and he grins for all of the second that the glitter coruscating on his cheeks stops him from reading the signs. 

“Oh  _fuck_ , no,” he says, and marches over, Steve grabbing at him and only managing to yank the shirt out of his pocket. 

“The hell are you assholes doing?” he yells as soon as he gets close. They’ve got camo painted signs, slogans and slurs and bullshit, and he’d bet any money not a one of them’s served their country. 

“We’ve got signs to spare,” one of ‘em says, smug and smirking, “if you wanna join us, soldier.” 

Bucky sees red, and he’d punch the guy if he wasn’t likely to lose his damned balance and make an ass of himself. Instead he whirls around to see a pair in purple dancing, and he shoves his fingers in his mouth and whistles. They both look up, the girl flicking long dark hair out of her eyes as he beckons them over. 

“Hey, beautiful, get over here,” he says. 

“You’re not my type,” she says, and he grins. 

“Wasn’t talking to you,” he says, and blondie grins a little, one-sided, shoving his hands in his pockets - and jeez, the guy’s got a beautiful pair of arms on him - and saunters over. 

“Wanna offend some assholes?” Bucky says, jerking his head towards the group at the sidelines. 

Instead of replying, the guy just moves in closer, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s shoulders, grinning that beautiful grin right in Bucky’s face.  _Fuck it_ , Bucky thinks, and wraps his arm low around the guy’s waist, going for the full show biz kiss, bending the guy backwards and trusting him to hang on. 

And sure, okay, maybe it starts as some kinda dick move, but the way this guy kisses, Bucky’s gonna get his number, make sure this  _ends_  with dicks, too. 


	93. Chapter 93

“For the last goddamned time, Tony,” Clint complains, “it’s  _not even my dick_.” 

“Why would you have other people’s dicks on your phone, Clint?” Tony says, patiently. 

“Yeah, Clint,” Bucky says, not looking up from his texting, “why would you have  _other people’s_  dicks on your phone?” 

“Oh my god you suck,” Clint mutters, half under his breath, and Bucky snorts. “Because my best friend is a troll who likes to make me choke in important meetings?” 

“ _I’d_  like to -” Bucky starts, but Tony’s not listening. 

“I dunno,” he says, and he squints at his phone, then down at Clint’s - 

“Hey!” Clint yelps, and covers his crotch with his hands. 

“Look, they’re blond, it’s conceivable that it’s -”

“It is  _not my dick_ ,” Clint yells, and Steve, walking in with a coffee, just blinks. He’s lived in the tower long enough to be mostly unfazed. 

“I think it’s your dick,” Tony says, and Steve blinks again. 

“Um,” he says. “Why are you looking at Clint’s dick?” 

“NOBODY IS LOOKING AT CLINT’S DICK,” Clint shouts. 

“ _I’d_ like to -” 

Tony cuts Bucky off. “Yeah, I’m gonna have to see some proof, Hawkguy,” he says, and Clint slaps both hands over his face. There’s the sounds of a struggle, and when he drags his hands away Bucky’s squinting thoughtfully at Tony’s phone. 

“That’s Steve’s,” he says dismissively. “Clint’s is bigger.” 


	94. Chapter 94

For a while there, Clint had wondered if his soulmate was Tony, ‘cos the guy sure was passionate about Captain America. Turned out, though, that there was a set of scales on Tony’s shoulder and - well, he was passionate about Captain America, all right, just not in a way that matched with the shield on Clint’s hip. 

Clint was curious about what his soulmate’s mark was. Him and Barney used to joke about it - that it’d be a big top, ‘cos he loved the circus, or a red nose ‘cos he was passionate about being a fuckin’ clown. 

“Your soulmate’s clearly a dork, though,” Barney had said, once, and in a rare turn of events he sounded thoughtful rather than mean with it. “Into comics and whatever. Maybe they’ll have -” he waved a hand vaguely. “Air resistance equations, or some shit.” 

That was supposed to be how it worked, that when you found your other half they taught you something about yourself as well. Like Barney, he’d had a skeleton key behind his ear, and when he’d gone into the academy he’d laughed about it, that he was gonna learn how they could be used legitimately. Two years in, though, he met a girl with a set of handcuffs broken open on the inside of her forearm, and Clint wasn’t so surprised when he’d heard that Barney had gone from a pretty mediocre agent to one of their most wanted. 

He kept an eye out for arrows, anyway. It’d figure. He wasn’t exactly a complicated guy. 

So when he met James Buchanan Barnes, the Winter Damned Soldier, when he felt that deep down click where something between them locked into place - well, it made sense of the patriotic color scheme he had going on, anyway. But the paw print on Bucky’s shoulder - 

“I mean, I love my dog,” he complained, thumb brushing over and over and over the mark, Bucky’s head tucked up under his chin and a cold metal hand clasped over his hip. “Lucky’s amazing, but we’re edging into furry territory here, and I’m not comfortable.” He snorted a little. “Unless it’s letting me know I’m gonna be passionate about being your bitch…” 

“Don’t pretend you ain’t,” Bucky mumbled, pressing his lips against Clint’s chest in an uncoordinated kiss. 

Clint wound his fingers into Bucky’s hair and tugged a little, and Bucky huffed out a breath and lifted his head, making eye contact, his gray eyes serious. 

“I always figured it for loyalty,” he said, “and that’s you down to the goddamn ground.” He leaned and pressed a kiss to Clint’s lips, his lips sliding against Clint’s as they curled into a grin. “Plus,” he said, “it’s Lucky, right? And I guess you gotta be, to end up with all this.” 


	95. Chapter 95

It’s one of those quirks the Asset has. Funny little glimmers of personality that slip through; things that don’t overall impair function, and are therefore not worth recalibration. Like how he jerks his head around like he’s in class being called on, whenever one of the scientists swears. Like the way he freaks out Steve Carlsberg, eyes always following him accusingly, even though all he knows is the guy’s name.

This one’s new, though.

“Hey,” Brown says, beckoning, “hey, come see this!”

Larson, who literally only got to be supervisor this week ‘cos no other asshole wanted to be on nights, eyes him suspiciously but - what the hell, it’s not like there’s anything else to entertain him. Brown’s an asshole, but he’s better than being alone; there’s something frankly fucking unsettling about the silent form strapped onto a table in the corner, even when to all appearances he’s sleeping.

“Is it the alarms thing?” He asks, affecting a world-weary tone just to show Brown his place. “'Cos whatever he’s remembering, he’s going back in cryo tomorrow so it’ll be wiped anyway.”

“Nah,” Brown says, dismissive. “Nah, watch this!”

Brown… starts singing. Some crap that’s been all over the radio lately.

“Sometimes I feel -”

“Brown-”

Brown holds up a peremptory finger, still singing.

“ - I’ve got to - ”

There’s the soft click of metal on metal, and Larson jumps.

“What the hell was - ?”

Brown grins his wide, asshole grin. “Watch his hand,” he says, and goes back to his song. “ - run away, I’ve got to - ”

That gentle clinking again, the Asset’s metal finger tapping twice to correspond with the song.

“…holy shit,” Larson says.

“Right?!” Brown is triumphant.

Larson grins back for all of a second before the implications hit him, and he chews on his thumb nail.

“You don’t think he’s got - ”

Brown looks uncomprehendingly at him for a moment, then realisation hits. “What, a soulmate? Nah.” He’s instantly dismissive, and Larson tries to take comfort from that. “Nah, he - he’s older than god, right? His soulmate’s gotta be - ”

“Dead, right,” Larson says. “Right.”

‘Cos having a soulmate would imply the Asset was a person, and that’s - he’s just not comfortable with that.

He can’t wait 'til he goes back in the deep freeze.

*

(Clint just goes through life assuming that he’s one of the untold masses without a soulmate, 'cos - 'cos everyone sings sometime, right?)


	96. Chapter 96

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mob boss AU

The man swallowed hard, which was a tell that any one of Clint’s instructors would kick his ass for, but he stayed exactly where he was planted in the doorway. 

“You can’t be here right now,” he said. “This isn’t exactly your jurisdiction.” 

Tasha smiled, slow and friendly and terrifying, and the bow in Clint’s hands creaked a little under the pressure. 

“Look,” she said, “I recognise that you’re just doing your job. We appreciate it, don’t we, Clint?” 

“Sure,” Clint grunted. 

“And because I respect you,” Tasha said sweetly, “I’m going to deal with you rather than leaving you to Clint.”

“Deal with - ?” was all he managed to get out. Clint loosed the tension on his bow and took a deep breath before opening the door, whipping his arrow up again before anyone in the room could react. 

FBI agents, in Clint’s experience, all look the same; these two might as well have been part of the furniture for all the attention he paid them. Sitting opposite them, tired and underfed and shaggy-haired and fucking beautiful, was James Buchanan Barnes, formally high up in the Irish mob, formally in witness protection in California, and now - because someone somewhere was fucking with Clint - detained in Alaska for no reason he could see. 

“Hey, baby,” he said, “I’m here to rescue you.” 

Bucky smiled, slow and relieved and everything that Clint needed in life. 

“Kick their asses, baby,” he said. “I got your flower.”


	97. Chapter 97

“Quit it or I’ll bite.”

Clint laughed across at him as Bucky fished the little paper pellets out of his hair and Bucky bared his teeth in return. 

“I’m sorry,” Tony said, “is this a briefing or have I somehow wandered into the SHIELD creche?”

“He started it,” Bucky said, and Clint grinned and stuck out his tongue. 

“This,” Tony said to Bruce, who’d followed him in. “This is why I’m never having kids.” 

“Oh?” Bruce said absently. “I thought it was Steve’s lack of a uterus.” 

“I’ll admit that doesn’t help,” Tony said, swinging himself into a chair and grabbing the agenda from the middle of the table. Clint had already shredded his and was industriously rolling the paper into tiny projectiles. He picked one up thoughtfully and rolled it between his fingers. 

“Try it,” Tony said without looking up, “and see if you get any more trick arrows.” 

There was a moment’s contemplative silence. 

“I wouldn’t,” said Bruce. 

“Clint -” Bucky started, then swore creatively as another ball of paper ended up in his hair. “I  _warned_  you,” he said, and shoved his chair back with a loud scrape. 

“You’re not seriously gonna -” Clint started, then “holy  _shit_ ,” as Bucky leaned down and fit his teeth around skin, just where Clint’s shoulder met his neck. He bit down - not hard, but firm enough to feel it, to leave a red mark on Clint’s shoulder and warm salt against his teeth. Clint was frozen, completely still, a tide of red washing up his neck, and Bucky had to fight the urge to put his fingers where his mouth had been, slide them up Clint’s skin until he could feel whether Clint’s heart was pounding as impossibly hard as his own. 


	98. Chapter 98

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mob boss AU

“You told me you were done,” Clint panted as Bucky shoved his shirt off his shoulders, yanking the collar down behind him but doing nothing about the cuffs so Clint had his arms pinned, helpless. “You told me - “

“You heard what you wanted,” Bucky growled, low and brutal, and his mouth against Clint’s neck was a punishment and a blessing, like one of those tortured saints. Clint arched into him, fought against his constraining shirt, and Bucky whipped his arm around in a tight circle to gather up the loose fabric, to tie Clint closer to him. 

“Bastard,” Clint hissed, and Bucky looked up at him through dark hair, eyes and teeth gleaming in the half-darkness, and there was nothing Clint could do but kiss him, bite at his lips. 

“Then what does that make you?” Bucky asked, voice liked poisoned honey, “when you’re the one who - “

Clint pushed forward again, caught him off guard in a vicious kiss that swallowed his words, like that way Clint could keep them secret and safe inside him. Like they didn’t both know exactly how fucked Clint was. Like they didn’t know how he’d react when Bucky gentled the kiss, how he’d crane his neck to follow every time, _every time_ , that Bucky pulled away.


	99. Chapter 99

“…the fuck? Who  _are_  you?”

The guy managed to flip off the roof, shrug and fire an explosive arrow that took out two of the robots, all at the same time, and still landed square on the fire escape. 

“No one special, pal,” he said, glancing around then firing three arrows in quick succession, staring up at Bucky as he did so. Either he didn’t trust him - which, considering the things that were slowly coming back, was probably the wisest course - or he was going for some kinda intimidation thing. There was a chance it was working. 

“You gonna rescue me and lie to me all in the same day?” Bucky called, flipping a knife over in his hand and then burying it in the robot’s eye socket. 

“Don’t know what you’re expecting to hear.” He sprang off the edge of the fire escape and caught the edge of the roof, hauling himself up before coming over to Bucky, collecting a couple of arrows from gently fizzing metal carcasses on the way. 

“I’ve been researching. You’re a - mutant, right?” 

“Nope.” He eyed one of the arrows he’d retrieved, considering the fletching for a second before running his tongue along it, smoothing it out. 

Jesus Christ, the arms had been enough. 

“So, what, some kinda radiation leak? Experimentation? Training with weird and kinda racist monk stereotypes?”

The guy eyed him sidelong, blue eyes amused. 

“You get Cartoon Network out here?” 

“Just let me know what the hell I’m dealing with.” 

“Just an average schmuck,” he said, nocking his arrow and letting it fly, taking out a robot that shoulda been way out of his range, “failing pretty badly at saving the world.” 

“Believe me,” Bucky said, and he paused there, taking a long moment to look him up and down, letting his eyes linger. “There’s nothing average about you.”


	100. Chapter 100

Bucky’d expected Clint to come in roaring, righteous anger and listed arguments, because he was learning to remember Steve. He was learning to remember how they’d always fought, stubborn and bull-headed, and unable to keep from hurting each other ‘cos they couldn’t disentangle far enough to do it. He’d learned to fight by pushing, and pushing, and winning by inches, but Clint just gave ground until he was walking out the door.

So he was wrong footed when Clint came back in quiet, shuffled his shoes off his feet, placed his keys on the counter almost so they didn’t make a sound. Was unprepared for the _size_ of him, how he’d somehow lost all the inches Bucky’d won, curled small in himself, quiet.

Bucky was expecting noise, a house full of sisters and never a one of them at fault, and half the time now he could even remember their names.

“I’m sorry,” Clint said, and Bucky’s stomach lurched like he’d overshot, like he’d braced too hard and now had the sick nervous rush of falling. Maybe it was the emptiness in Clint’s voice. “I’m sorry, I don’t wanna fight.”

“But - ”

Clint took a deep breath and Bucky bit back his stubborn, measured words, measured in the inches that were given and the miles that he took.

“I know that we - that communication is healthy, I get that,” and that was a therapy phrase, that was learned and careful words, and Bucky wasn’t sure how they’d reached this poorly mapped part of Clint’s vocabulary, unfamiliar, dangers lurking in the trees. Clint looked up, baby-blue eyes, and Bucky saw that he wasn’t the only one who was lost. “I get that we need to talk,” Clint said, carefully picking his way, “and I don’t wanna go to bed angry, but - ”

“Hey,” Bucky said, low and soothing, and he moved in increments and inches, only taking what was given, grateful that Clint didn’t move away.

“I’m tired, Buck,” Clint said, “I don’t - can we do this tomorrow?”

“We can talk when you’re ready,” Bucky told him. “Take whatever you need.”


	101. Chapter 101

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cop Bucky AU

“Bro… that’s so… not cool…”

Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a huff of breath, ‘cos it’d been a long shift and the last thing he needed right now was - 

“Cool or not, Clint, I gotta arrest you.”

Clint was actually attempting to get out of this with puppy dog eyes, sticking out his lower lip and looking up at Bucky from under his lashes. The hell of it was, it was almost working. 

“Quit it,” he said, snapped really. “You don’t get to use our - “ he stumbled over the word relationship, not sure that Clint was ready for that yet. Him, he was all in, ‘cos Bucky had ever been a sucker for love, and that was just making all of this infinitely worse. “Our  _thing_  against me.” 

“I’d like to use my -” Clint caught a look at Bucky’s face and cut himself off. “Sorry.” He looked kinda sheepish. “Um, if it helps, I got a good reason?”

“You’re waving a fuckin’ bow and arrow around in public, Clint,” Bucky said, helpless, “what the hell kinda reason could you have?” 

Clint palmed the back of his neck, which was one of his tells, but discomfort rather than flat-out lying. 

“So,” he said. “Er. I’m guessin’ you’ve heard of the Hawk?” 

“That asshole vigilante?” Bucky asked, before it quite hit him. “The one who -” his mouth dropped open. “Aw, hell.  _Clint -”_

“Look, I was gonna tell you,” Clint said, holding his hands up, “I swear to god, that was what the whole dinner tomorrow was gonna be about, I was gonna -”

“Right,” Bucky said, and felt like an ass ‘cos he’d been hoping Clint was gonna ask for something a little more than the fuck-buddy arrangement they had going on. “Fuck.” 

Clint scowled at him, something vulnerable hiding behind the belligerent look on his face. 

“Look,” he said, “I saved like three people’s lives and a whole box full of kittens last week, so dumping me right now would be a really dick move.” 

Dumping - that had to imply dating, right? And Jesus, Bucky was gone, ‘cos he could feel a little curl of a smile teasing at the edge of his mouth. 

“I’m not dumping you, asshole,” he said. “You can take me for coffee after I pay your goddamn bail.” 


	102. Chapter 102

“I don’t need you, really.” 

Clint made an emphatic gesture,  _see?_ , and stalked over to the refrigerator, hooking out a bottle of beer and twisting off the cap with a violent motion. He was visibly, obviously upset, but even that couldn’t make him miss, flicking the cap so it ricocheted off the counter-top, bounced on the edge of Lucky’s water bowl and into the recycling. 

“I can’t - this can’t be one-sided,” Clint said, after a second’s awful silence where Bucky considered and rejected a million stupid-ass things to say. “You get that, right? I can’t -” He hauled himself onto one of the bar stools by the counter, slumping over and resting his head in his hands. “I’ve been there. I’ve lived there, okay, and it eats away at your self esteem ‘til it nearly goddamn kills you, and I can’t - I can’t be there again, okay, I don’t like the guy it makes me.” 

Bucky rubbed a hand across his mouth and his hand,  _his_  hand was shaking. The scratch of stubble was the only sound in the stillness of the room until he cleared his throat, tried to put words into some kinda order. 

“I  _don’t_  need you - no, it’s my turn now, asshole - but I - don’t I get to have what I want, yet?” He felt, stupidly and inexplicably, betrayed. “Haven’t I fuckin’ earned that?” 

“Buck -”

Clint fell silent at the harsh slicing motion Bucky made with his metal hand, with one of the endless fuckin’ proofs that he’d given enough. 

“You can’t lead the life I’ve lived and need anything from  _anyone_ , okay? Needing people is fucking suicide, and I’ve got too much practice living to give it up any time soon.”

“Fuck,  _Bucky_  - “

“Shut the fuck up, Clint, I am not done.” He wasn’t sure when he’d stood up, when he’d shoved himself to his feet, but his hands were wrapped tight around the back of the chair he’d been sitting on and he felt like it was the only solid thing in the world. “You don’t get to ask me for that, okay?” He could hear that his voice was unsteady but there was momentum there, like running downhill and jarring at every step. “You got  _no right_  to make me need you when I already want you like I do.”

“How d’you want me?” Clint asked, soft into the silence, and from anyone else that’d be some kinda manipulation, the conversation they were having, but Clint made up in physical acrobatics how fuckin’ incapable he was with emotions. 

“You’re everything to me, you fuckin’ idiot,” Bucky said, helpless. “I could live without you but I am asking you with everything I got, please don’t fuckin’ make me.”


	103. Chapter 103

“Bitch better have my money.”

Clint was twitchy today, tapping his hands on the table top in some incomprehensible rhythm that bore no relation to the song that was drifting over the mall’s speakers. Tony snorted at his low comment, and Steve looked genuinely offended.

“She had to be seventy years old, Clint, and that ain’t a nice way to talk about a lady.”

Clint looked confused for the moment that took to register, then rolled his eyes. “Calm your star-spangled tits, Cap, it’s one of those references you don’t get.”

Bucky snorted into the milkshake Clint had bought him, good all-American boy that he was. Bucky had his foot hooked around Clint’s ankle under the table, and even though Bucky was a good Catholic girl he might let him get fresh with him on the couch later, as an anniversary treat. Clint shot him a quick look and Bucky sent him a grin, wide and amused at himself and so damn genuine, and about an inch of Clint’s nervous energy disappeared, enough for him to ease into a smile of his own. The expression on his face was so fond that Tony made faces and the waitress made soft cooing noises when she returned with the bag full of Clint’s quarters.

Clint shot out of his seat, taking a handful with speedy thanks and heading for the gumball machine at the edge of the food court. Bucky rolled his eyes, but he wasn’t fooling anybody, watching as Clint bought and discarded a handful of eggs before doing a small victory dance, grinning down at what was in his hand before heading back over at a carefully calculated saunter.

“Gonna tell me what that was about?” Bucky asked, and Clint made a show of unwrapping his gum before tossing a little plastic ring onto the table in front of Bucky.

“I just wanted the gum,” he said, “you want this?”

“Sure,” Bucky said, half-laughing, shoving it onto the end of his pinkie.

“Wanna marry me, too?” Clint asked, casual as anything, and Tony choked on his coffee.

“Holy shit,” he said, “that was the most contrived moment of pretentious insouciance I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve snapped, but Bucky had descended into fits of laughter and Clint was looking more and more uncertain as the seconds continued to pass.

“Oh my god,” Bucky eventually managed, grabbing hold of Clint’s hand and weaving their fingers together too tight for Clint to pull free, “hell fuckin’ yes I’ll marry you, you fuckin’ meatball.”

Clint let out a sigh of relief and all of the tension in his body, curling forward to rest his forehead in the crook of Bucky’s neck and muttering something low and intimate into Bucky’s ear.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky said, resigned to the fact that this was his life now, “yes we can have meatball subs at the goddamn reception.”


	104. Chapter 104

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cop Bucky AU

“Real smooth, tripping over air.” 

“Aaw bite me, Officer Barnes,” Clint said, hauling the Hawk’s stupid mask off his head and leaning back against the wall, streaming with sweat even though his gasping breath was steaming in the frigid night air. “I’d like to see you try it.” 

“Pretty sure I can dismount a fire escape without falling flat on my ass.” Bucky walked a little further into the alley, shifting to the side so he blocked out less of the light. Clint was sitting in the shadow of a dumpster, sprawled out a little like he wasn’t even trying to hide; that said, most of the closest units were occupied with picking up the bolo-tangled assholes who tried to knock over the pawn shop on 7th. “You tryin’ to get me to arrest you again?”

“I gotta thing for the handcuffs,” Clint said, with the kind of smile that was half a grimace, “what can I say?” 

The shadowed darkness behind the dumpster caught a little of the light, reflected it back in a way that shadows didn’t. 

“Clint, are you -?” 

“So how quick can you get me outta these clothes?” Clint asked, and this one was barely a smile at all. “‘cos I can’t walk into a hospital looking like this, and we wait much longer I’m not sure I’m gonna be walkin’ in at all.” 

“Fuck,” Bucky said, dropping to his knees so he could haul Clint’s arm around his neck, stagger to his feet lop-sided with his barely-helping weight. “Fuck, Clint, you gotta stop doing this to yourself, if you die by yourself in a goddamn alleyway I’m gonna kick your ass -”

Clint choked out a small noise, coulda been a laugh, coulda been a grunt of pain. 

“You volunteering to be my partner, partner?” 

“Yeah, ‘cos I’d look so great in a domino mask.” 


	105. Chapter 105

“It’s not that I don’t want to. I’m just really, really drunk… like, really.” 

Clint’s voice over the comms is slurring, sure, committed to character development, but there’s also a trace of something a little panicky that’s making all the hair stand up on the back of Bucky’s neck. 

“Steve,” he says, low, and Steve is chewing on his lip, looking conflicted. 

“Clint, are you -”

“Woah,” Clint snaps, “ _hands_ ,” and Bucky growls and throws himself out the back of the van, heading into the bar at a march that’s not far off running. The place is badly lit, buzzing neon over the pool tables, and it takes a second for Bucky’s eyes to adjust enough to catch sight of Clint’s stupid purple shirt over by the bathrooms. 

The guy crowding him against the wall is even taller than Clint is, and built with it, which explains why he’d been hired as Hydra muscle in the first place. Bucky heads over, head down and fists clenched, and Clint catches sight of him and there’s a moment of impossible  _relief_  on his face before he resolves it into a scowl. 

“Hey,” Clint says, sliding out from under the guy’s arm when he turns to look for who Clint’s talking to. “Hey,  _asshole_ , I thought I said I didn’t wanna see you any more.” 

“Aaw, baby,” Bucky says, sliding effortlessly into character, “don’t be like this.”

“The hell’s this?” Hydra goon grunts, and Bucky gives him a quick once-over, dismissive. 

“I’m his boyfriend, asshole, who the hell are you?” 

“No you’re not,” Clint slurs, “you’re a dick and I don’t wanna -” he acts like he’s lost his train of thought. “I like Dirk now.” 

“Dave,” the guy says, and Clint nods. 

“Right, right, Dave, this guy.” He grins up at him and then makes a show of palming his ass, and the guy’s too busy smirking at Bucky to notice Clint sliding the flash drive he’s fished out of the guy’s back pocket into his own. 

“You don’t mean that,” Bucky says and steps forward, into Clint’s space, slides his fingers down from his elbow to his hand and linking their fingers together. “C’mon baby, you gotta know I love you.” 

Clint bites his lip and looks down, his fingers tightening on Bucky’s. 

“Fuck’s sake,” Dave says, “you’re not even hot enough for this.” He stalks away to the bar, and Clint snorts, looking up at Bucky with a mischievous smirk. 

“You gonna let him talk to me that way?”

Bucky shrugs. “At least we know Hydra’s dumb as well as evil.” 

“Aaw,” Clint says, “you say the sweetest things.” 

“He still looking?” Bucky asks, and Clint glances over his shoulder. 

“Yeah, why, you gonna - ?” but his eyes are already flickering down to Bucky’s mouth, and he licks his lips, and he pulls on Bucky’s hand, and Bucky figures that’s all pretty unmistakable. 

“…everything okay, guys?” Steve asks, maybe five minutes later, but Bucky’s got both hands in Clint’s hair and he’s got no interest in using his mouth for anything but this. 


	106. Chapter 106

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steampunk circus AU

The twins were running through the crowd, speaking with punters in hushed voices about the Incredible Man of Iron, stirring up curiosity and intrigue and the likelihood of commercial interaction. Eventually Hulk would hunt them down and haul them off by their ears, both reinforcing the circus’ strict policy on security and ensuring that The Spectacular Soaring Sokovians were on time to start their aerial act. That one’d been Clint’s idea. 

They were a small outfit, and everyone had multiple roles. Tasha was currently swathed in velvet and lace, telling punters what Madame Natalia saw in their future, and in seventeen minutes would be the Widowmaker, challenging all comers to take her on in the ring. Tony was probably in the jury-rigged workshop adding something to the Iron Man that was overblown and fantastical and liable to explode, and later he’d be kissing people’s cheeks and charming people’s smiles and weaving dreams into introductions in the middle of the ring. 

Clint was a general dogsbody, mostly, ‘cos he was a pony of one trick. So he spent most of his time fixing precarious platforms, scaling heights to patch canvas, hawking roasted chestnuts, and waiting for the few glorious occasions a day when he could be the Amazing Hawkeye and revel in the adoration of the crowd. 

Usually it was the adoration that he was in it for, but every now and again it was the crowd. Clint was a sucker for long hair, well-shaped figures, stormy-blue eyes, and he’d been watching the guy in the winter overcoat for the better part of the afternoon. Something about him was intriguing, and it wasn’t just the beautifully cut line of his jaw. 

“Clint!” 

Pietro raced out of the crowd and leaped at him, trusting that Clint would catch him even with his newly longer legs and growth-addled balance. Clint did, of course, and then dropped him on his arse, turning instead to Wanda who approached more sedately and could generally be relied on to make far more sense. 

“Something exciting, witchlet?” he asked, and she was smiling, excited, and he couldn’t help his grin in response. 

“In the crowd,” she said, “Clint, we must find Tony and tell him, there is a man with a clockwork arm!”


	107. Chapter 107

“I am saying, here and now, that you are going to regret this. So when the time comes, the ‘I told you so’ will be all the sweeter.” 

Bucky glared at Steve, who was half outta his shirt and therefore didn’t fully appreciate the effect. 

“Who made me the online dating profile, Steve?” he said. “Whose asshole idea was it to get me ‘interacting’ more with ‘people’?”

“Okay yes,” Steve said, emerging from his shirt-shaped cocoon with a flushed face and sex hair, “ _that_ part was me, but talking to the gay Tasmanian devil is all you, buddy.” 

“He doesn’t describe himself  _as_  a gay Tasmanian devil,” Bucky said, “he describes himself as  _like_  a gay Tasmanian devil, keep up.” 

“Right.” Steve rolled his eyes, “‘cos that is so much better.” He sighed and snagged Bucky’s new black shirt off the back of the couch. “I’m borrowing this,” he said, hauling it over his head. 

Bucky considered telling him about the smear of chocolate across the back of it - the reason he was currently shirtless in the first place - but figured that it wasn’t as if it was gonna harm his chances with Sam, who was clearly twitterpated. Also Steve was an Asshole, and Deserved It. 

“Have a good date,” he said, and waved Steve out the door before turning back to the dating profile that was open on his screen. The picture showed a bundle of blankets with a shock of blond hair the only part of the guy visible, and the entirety of the profile read:

_A cyclone of alcohol and pain meds and bad decisions. Like a gay Tasmanian devil._

And yeah, a little part of this decision was the fact that Bucky was fairly convinced the profile was a fake, that he wasn’t gonna get a response, that he could fulfill Steve’s guilt-trip without actually having to interact. The other part - the bigger part - was that it was the first thing besides Steve that had got a laugh outta him since they’d got back stateside. 

That was worth a risk, right?

 _I always saw myself as sexy Valkyrie Bugs,_  he typed, took a deep breath and hit ‘send’. 


	108. Chapter 108

It’s not even anything particular, it’s just a pile of little annoyance-gravel that’s sliding under his feet, taking the ground out from under him, until he’s somehow in the middle of a landslide of a day.

The worst of it is that he’s got no control over it. That it’s not like he coulda made different calls at any point that would’ve improved things, ‘cos at least then he could’ve taken comfort in beating himself up about it and, significantly, could’ve maybe made different choices in the future. Nah, he’s dealing with other people’s poor foundations, and there’s no way he can settle his feet enough to find a secure place to start from, fixing his life.

The tired is weighing heavy on him, like the stinking sheepskin Madame Es used to toss over him when he passed out in the corner of her trailer, curled small and hiding from Barney or the Swordsman. It almost doesn’t seem worth picking at the edges of the gauze patched onto his side with fumbling fingers, it’s tempting to leave it ‘til he’s propped up his life a little with sleep, but he’s not a super soldier and he’s all full of grit, and -

There’s a little tap at the door. It’s Steve’s boy, Bucky, and Clint makes an effort to shoot him a half-complete grin, 'cos he’s hiding behind his hair again and he shouldn’t feel that unwelcome.

“Hey,” he says, “gimme a - ” and like he can take himself by surprise, like that’ll somehow hurt less, he yanks at the gauze and rips it away from his skin. “Sec,” he finishes, and, “ow.”

Yeah, it’s a good call, dealing with this now. The road rash is peppered with dirt and grit, and he pokes sadly at it because there’s no way this ain’t gonna suck.

Remembering his audience, Clint looks up.

“Sorry, hi,” he says, “you wanted something?”

“You weren’t at dinner,” he says, and he pushes the door open a little further, and he’s got a box of pizza in his other hand. “I brought you food.”

“Oh,” Clint says.

Bucky comes in and puts the pizza on Clint’s lopsided table, then hovers a little uncertainly, shifting his weight.

“I, er,” he says, and tucks his hair behind his ear. Clint watches the motion, his eyes snagging on the guy’s ear like it’s something special, on the line of his jaw 'cos there’s no way that’s not. “I’m kinda out of practice,” Bucky continues, nodding at Clint’s wrecked side, “but I can give you a hand with that, if it’d help?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, and leads him through to the bathroom, hopping up onto the counter and watching as Bucky finds a pair of tweezers, some q-tips, a washcloth. That last he runs water over, and he does it careful and caring, checking the temperature first. Clint feels jarred all over, like he was stumbling over nothing and found an unexpected solid place to stand.


	109. Chapter 109

Bucky tackled Clint just as soon as the door to the ‘jet lowered, stumbling over the end of the ramp and taking them both down. 

“Ow,” Clint breathed, but arched up into the kiss, lifting his head enough that Bucky could get his hand under there, twist his fingers into the too-long hair at the nape of Clint’s neck. Clint was smiling. Bucky could feel Clint smiling. Bucky fuckin’ loved when he could feel Clint’s smiles. 

“Everything went precisely as expected,” Tasha was saying somewhere distant and unimportant. She stepped delicately over them; Sam was a little less careful and Bucky gave him an emphatic middle finger at the booted nudge to his side. 

“You know I’m not actually the one who debriefs you,” Rhodey said, flat. “You’re still gonna have to do the whole meeting thing.” 

“Nope,” Bucky raised his head long enough to say, and then buried his face in Clint’s neck. Clint wove his fingers into Bucky’s hair, relaxing back fully against the ramp, apparently there for the duration. 

“Seriously,” Sam said flatly, “is the honeymoon period ever gonna die with those two? Hey, assholes!” a little louder, “he’s been gone  _three days_.” 

“Too long,” Clint yelled back, and Bucky eased up to his ear. 

“Three days, two hours, seventeen minutes,” he said, soft. “Too fuckin’ long.” 

“Well this is all very sweet,” Natasha said, and her tone of voice said she had her arms crossed, and her tone of voice said she was smirking, “but I have to steal Clint for a debriefing.” 

Bucky made a noise of protest that had Clint’s chest jumping against his, his giggles buried behind Bucky’s ear. 

“Fine,” he said, finally, pushing himself off and up, although not without a couple of quick blunt kisses, reluctance in every line of him. “But the clock’s ticking. Don’t keep him too long.”


	110. Chapter 110

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fairytale AU

Clint is singing softly to himself as he makes his way back to his blanket roll, only half dressed since his costume is always taken from him as soon as he’s done, checked over immediately for wearing and tearing and loss of shine. He’s left his bow in the ‘masters tent, and it’s not often he has cause to regret that. Not often is not never, though, and before he can flinch he has been pressed against the back of one of the truckle wagons that’s usually stacked with canvas, its splintered wood digging into his unprotected back. 

“I remember your singing,” a voice says, and his features aren’t easy to make out in the darkness, but Clint has spent too many shameful nights, has  _spent_  on too many shameful nights with that moonlit face in his mind’s eye. 

“I’m sorry for it,” he says frankly. “Barney says it ain’t one of my gifts.” 

“Barney’s an idiot, then,” the man says, and his eyes are moving restlessly across Clint’s face as though he’s looking for something, the light from one of the campsite’s few torches catching occasionally bright in his eye. 

Clint attempts to push himself forward, but he is prevented, the pressure from the man’s hands relentless, but not cruel. 

“What do you want?” he says eventually, frustrated from striving, and what little light there is - now Clint’s eyes have given in to it - is just enough to see the man’s mouth ease a little open, so Clint is not entirely taken by surprise when his mouth is taken, firm and warm and a shiver of good. Clint throws himself into it, because unless he beds someone from the circus - which would be like family, which he will never do - all of his encounters are brief and decided in moments. And this one, he has wanted. 

He pushes forward again, wanting to slide to his knees, but again is prevented. Annoyed, he slides his hand down to where flesh is hard and hot against him, cupping it in his hand and squeezing a promise. 

The man pulls away, a soft noise of refusal in his throat, and Clint is left flushed and panting and hard, sprawled back against the wagon and confused beyond the telling of it. 

“I just wanted to thank you,” he is told, and Clint looks him up and down in the barely-light and huffs his annoyance. 

“I could be better thanked,” he says, but it’s a complaint and not an expectation, and he pushes himself upright and waves away help. 

This time he is taken off-guard when the man darts in, presses a soft promise to his mouth. 

“Thank you for saving me,” he says, and disappears into the shadows. 


	111. Chapter 111

There’s a flash of bright light and Bucky pulls away, swears, looks to his left in time for another, the paparazzo catching an expression of true hatred, no doubt. That’s probably what has him running. 

“Fuck,” he bites out. “ _Fuck_.” 

Clint is still sprawled against the wall, blinking slow and mouth red and used. He bites on his lip and Bucky’s eyes drop to it, helpless, and he sways back in for a fraction of a second before firming his resolve, spinning away and tapping his comms. 

“Steve,” he snaps. 

“Where the hell are you guys?” Steve says, instantly, annoyed but not angry, “I’m pretty sure they’ve got enough brooms for you to pull your -”

“Someone saw us,” Bucky interrupts. 

“…saw you - ?”

“Me and Clint,” Bucky says. “They took a fuckin’ photograph.” 

“Oh shit, you guys finally -” Steve says, sounding almost elated, then - “oh. Shit.” 

“Yeah.” 

Clint has pushed himself back up to standing, now, and he’s a little curled into himself, checking his quiver and inventorying arrowheads with sharp, angry movements. 

“Big black guy,” Bucky says, “Mets shirt, huge fuckin’ camera. Can we get a lid on it?” 

“No idea,” Steve says, sounding resigned. “Like I know anything about cameras, clouds, any of that crap. Sam’ll find him, though.” 

“Okay,” he says. He taps off his comms, runs a hand through his hair, turns to Clint. “Okay. Sorry.” 

Clint shrugs his quiver back on, folds his arms. 

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s pretty fuckin’ obvious.” He’s glowering, but at the floor not at Bucky, and every line of him tells Bucky to Stay Back. 

“Sam’s after the guy,” he says, soft and soothing, “no one is gonna know.” 

“Nothing to know about,” Clint says, and it’s Bucky looking away this time, angry and upset and disappointed and trying not to show off any of it. 

“I thought -” he says, a little pathetic, a little plaintive, and Clint cuts in. 

“I know what you  _thought_ ,” he says. “Been a dirty little secret before, not doing it again.”

“Wait, what?” Bucky says, and he steps all over the body language, he steps in close and hooks his fingers around Clint’s bracer, wishing to god he was touching skin. “You’re not - you don’t mind the media gettin’ hold of this?” 

Clint must read something in Bucky’s face, something like awe, ‘cos he eases up on the pissed a little, uncrosses his arms. 

“The hell would I have to be ashamed of?” he asks, looking genuinely uncertain. 

“Which of us is dating a notorious fuckin’ killer?” Bucky asks, dry. 

“Um,” Clint says. “Both of us, asshole.” He lick his lip, cocking his head a little, looking painfully uncertain. “We’re dating?” 

All the paparazzi in the fuckin’ world couldn’t have stopped Bucky from kissing him, right then, right there, right out in the open. 


	112. Chapter 112

“You’d better remember this tomorrow,” Clint said, “‘cos I have at least seven bets to collect on, here.” He paused, considering, and Bucky rocked a little more into his side, the fifth bottle of vodka just kickin’ in nice. 

“Maybe we should document this, for posterity,” Clint said, and pulled out his phone, heaving Bucky a little more upright. Bucky flicked his hair out of his eyes and grinned sloppily up at the camera. “Oh, that’s awesome.” 

“One more?” Bucky said, and Clint shrugged and and held out the phone again, pulling some kinda face that involved him sucking in his cheeks and squinting. Five bottles of vodka were all warm in Bucky’s stomach, and it made it  _real_  hard to resist impulses, which’d be why Clint’s eyes were stretched all wide in the photograph, Bucky’s grin pressed against his cheek. 

“Okay,” Clint said faintly, “maybe eight.” 


	113. Chapter 113

They’re squashed up tight under the tarp, Clint’s bow digging uncomfortably into Bucky’s hip. Bucky had made a fuss about Clint not needing the shelter, his weapon being a little - 

“Um,  _better_?” 

\- more resilient, but that had been mostly for the comms, for the listeners who were waiting on news of the target. The patter of raindrops on the tarp drowned out the sound of Clint’s harsh breathing, and Bucky did his best to keep a lid on the other noises he was makin’, low groans in his throat muffled by Bucky’s mouth. 

They’re making this quick, they’re making this  _quiet_ , rustle of tarpaulin and rhythmic raindrops, Clint swearing so low it’s almost inaudible, his hips pushing up against Bucky’s cold metal hand. 

Bucky slides up close to the ear that’s got the undoctored aid in it, the one that won’t broadcast his gentle all over the comms. 

“You’re the best goddamned thing in my life,” he says, low and rough, and Clint is rocked by coming, curling up so he can bite into Bucky’s shirt, shaking and jerking against him, chewing out soft noises into damp fabric. 

“Oh fuck,” he manages eventually, “oh fuck, Bucky, shit,” and the breathless swearing’s as good a declaration as any ‘cos it takes a hell of a lot for Clint Barton to be lost for words. 

“Rude,” a voice cuts in, loud over comms. “I’m pretty sure  _I’m_  the best thing in everyone’s life.” 

“Tony,” Steve says, annoyed, but he’s sounding a little pink about it. “If we could - focus, please?” 

Bucky buries his vicious swearing in Clint’s chest, but Clint’s laughter rings out over the comms for everyone to hear. 


	114. Chapter 114

“Natasha, help me,” Clint whispered, his voice strained, his hand twisting tightly into her shirt. “I think I’m dying.” 

“You’re an idiot,” she said, and stuck her thumb into his wrist in a place that made his entire hand go numb. He bit back a swear word just in time and cradled his hand to his chest, eyes still fixed on the doorway. 

Tony’d been coming to the elementary school to start some kinda fund, or replace some equipment, or something of the kind that Tony did, and the Stark PR guy had insisted some of the Avengers accompany him. Apparently the killing of giant vicious hamsters last week had been too far for the public, ‘cos huge and deadly as the things were, they’d also been kinda cute. So now Clint, Natasha and Bucky were going for photo ops with small multi-ethnic adorable children. 

“See if you can find one in a wheelchair!” the guy had piped merrily, and Tasha had had to physically stop Clint from punching him. 

Good things had come out of this, though. Good things like Bucky sitting on a tiny first-graders’ chair, hair tucked behind his ears, coloring intently according to a minuscule boy’s instructions. 

He pulled out his phone and snapped a quick picture, tucking it back into his pocket before going to play dress-up with the kids in the corner. 

He was looking at the picture when Bucky came to bed that night, and he rolled over to press a kiss to his metal shoulder, long past differentiating the way he treated them. 

“What was that for?” Bucky said, with a soft and sleepy grin. 

“You were being cute,” Clint said. “I couldn’t help myself.” 

“Well if I manage it all the damned time,” Bucky said, “you got no excuse.” 


	115. Chapter 115

Some days are better than others. Hydra doesn’t have their hands on Bucky any more and that’s, y’know, that’s not  _something_ , that’s  _everything._ But the memories are coming back slowly where they’re coming back at all, and sometimes the indifferent way Bucky looks at him is impossible to take. 

Those days, Clint winds up on the range, forgoing gloves and bracers and shooting until his fingers bleed. 

The world doesn’t end ‘cos Clint’s having relationship issues, of course. There’s still monsters to fight and asses to kick, and Steve’s started saying that someday soon Bucky’ll be going along with them, ‘cos his memory’s spotty as hell but he knows whose side he’s on. 

“Clint’s side,” Bucky says, flat and disinterested, ignorant to the way Clint’s heart is trying to punch its way out of his chest. “Clint’s got the best taste in pizza.” 

Tasha sends him a tiny sympathetic smile that is  _not helping_ , and Clint goes to bury his sorrows in the freezer. 

The next day he’s geared up and ready, waiting for the ‘jets ramp to slowly lower, when someone comes up behind him and taps him in the shoulder. 

“Yup?” he says, incurious, turning around, but he’s cut off by the quick peck Bucky presses to his mouth, followed up by an ungentle swat to his ass. 

Clint’s knees give up on him. He winds up on the floor, his hand pressed over his mouth like he’s gonna be sick, like he’s gonna wail, like he’s gonna puke up his heart right here on the concrete. 

“Good luck,” Bucky says, completes it, and he’s got a little smile just tugging at the corner of his mouth. 

“Oh fuck,” Clint says, and he’s blinking as fast as he can but the smile still keeps blurring. “Oh, fuck, you  _remembered.”_

 

 


	116. Chapter 116

“Look, I’m  _doin’_  it,” Bucky bellows, and Steve grins ‘cos it’s the most James Buchanan Barnes he’s sounded in over half a century. Clint, who’s got his back against the wall, Bucky’s hand resting just above his shoulder, all kinds of casual, winces a little at the volume even while his smirk remains firmly in place. 

“You doin’ it any time soon?” he asks, “‘cos Dog Cops is back on in like three days, and there ain’t no way I’m missing that.” 

“Aw,” Bucky says, and that’s the smile that’d broken many a dame’s heart back in the ‘30s, and Clint looks just as affected, “keep your shirt on, sugar, I’m gettin’ to you.”

“You are getting to him like a snail,” Natasha says, and no one misses the quick glance at her phone, at the time writ large across it. Her tone is getting sour. “It will serve you right if he gives up on you.” 

“This would be so much easier without the peanut gallery,” Clint says, and then, softer, “never gonna give you up.” 

“Never gonna let you down,” Bruce chimes in from the kitchen, and Clint chokes on a laugh, bending a little forward and getting their faces all outta alignment again. Steve looks at his watch and grins. 

30 seconds. 29…

“Look,” Clint says, when he’s calmed down enough from laughing, “maybe we should -” 

“No,” Bucky says, and that’s his determined voice, and Steve still has seventeen seconds to go dammit, “no, I’m not gonna -”

“Er, Avengers, Assemble?” Steve tries, which earns him a punch in the shoulder from Natasha and no attention whatsoever spared between Clint and Bucky. 

“I’ve been wantin’ to do this,” Bucky says, soft and low, and no tone Steve’s heard on any of their double dates before. 

“So do it,” Clint says, and Bucky leans in - 

3 seconds, 2… 

and brushes his lips just barely against Clint’s, careful and slow. The hesitant contact breaks off with a start when Natasha crows loudly. 

“Ha,” she says, “before midnight, Rogers.” 

Steve scowls. “Aaw, Buck, you couldn’t have waited a second more?” 

“Nah,” Bucky says, and he’s smiling that beautiful smile into Clint’s face, and it’s worth any number of lost bets to see him look that happy, Steve thinks. “Nah, I don’t think I could.”


	117. Chapter 117

“Y’know,” Bucky says, wheeling around on Clint and getting up in his face, “I would really appreciate it if you could back off.” 

“Oh,” Clint says, and he looks genuinely taken aback, genuinely hurt. “Yeah, sure. I just.” He palmed the back of his neck, looked up at Bucky with his head ducked, “I kinda thought you were into me.” The side of his mouth quirks up a little, but the little lines between his eyebrows make it a joke of a smile. 

“This ain’t about how I feel.” He looks up at the cameras at the corners of the corridor, and folds his arms across his chest. “Stark watching this?” 

Clint blinks. “I - Tony? Why would he be -”

“I heard the two of you,” Bucky says, flat and emotionless, the words coming from somewhere uncomfortable in his belly. 

“You… heard us?” 

“Fifty bucks, was it? If you could convince the frozen geriatric to give in -”

Clint’s expression melts into something faintly horrified, and he holds out his hands. 

“If I could convince  _Steve_ ,” he says, hurried, the words falling over each other, “if I could convince Steve to watch the goddamn  _Star Wars trilogy_ , why would - why the hell would I invite Tony to witness my fuckin’ humiliation?” 

“Humiliation,” Bucky says. 

“Like I go into wooing anyone with the expectation it’ll work,” Clint’s tone ain’t quite amused, even if he’s halfway smiling. “Look, I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, and I’m sorry if I’ve been making you uncomfortable, and I’ll just -” he hesitates as Bucky stalks forward. “I’ll back off, which would be easier if you weren’t -”

“So you meant it?” Bucky asks. 

“I am pathetically into you,” Clint says, hands still spread in front of him, nothing but honesty in his voice. 

“Good,” Bucky says, “‘cos otherwise this woulda got awkward quick.” 

Clint might not go into things expecting them to work, but he’s all in from the first in any case, throwing himself head first into danger and potential embarrassment. It was one of the first things Bucky noticed about him, liked about him, and with Clint’s eager mouth against his he’s sure as hell appreciating it now. 

 

 


	118. Chapter 118

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hockey AU

The room’s in the soft half-light that’s as dark as hospitals ever get, but it still takes a second for Steve to notice the shadow that’s sitting in the corner, bent over with his hands clenched in his hair. 

“…Bucky?” he asks, hesitant, ‘cos why the hell would - 

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky says, his voice thick in the darkness. “You here to chuck me out on my ass?” 

“Am I gonna have a reason to?” Steve comes a little further into the room, dumps the flowers he’s carrying into a corner where there’s still a little space. 

“Well I figured a Hydra goon wouldn’t exactly be -”

“You’re not a Hydra goon,” Steve snaps back, and then lets a half smile take the anger off his face. “You’re a goon who happens to work for Hydra. What’re you doing here, Buck?” 

Bucky glanced at the bed, then away again. Steve followed his line of sight and winced. Clint looked a mess, both his eyes black, his nose swollen, both arms in casts. 

“This is my fault,” Bucky says, low and defeated. “I did this.” 

“The refs, two teams and about three hundred fans’d argue with you there, Buck,” Steve says, implacable. 

“I was supposed to take him out,” Bucky’s voice is desolate in the darkness. “I was supposed to - but I wouldn’t, so they sent in fuckin’ Rumlow.” 

“‘kin Rumblow,” echoes a voice from the bed. “Hate that guy.” 

“Clint,” Bucky says, shoving up to his feet immediately and then hovering there, looking uncertain in a way that Steve - who’s known Bucky since he was in diapers, who had experienced his awkward adolescent crushes the first time around - recognizes immediately. 

He goes around to the side of the bed, placing his hand square in the small of Bucky’s back and shoving him forward unsubtly, so Bucky takes a couple of stumbling steps forward. His hand goes out to touch Clint’s fingers, like they’re something precious and infinitely breakable, and Clint smiles up at him even though it’s gotta be killing his face. 

And sure, it’s awkward, but Steve is pretty sure this is more than a crush. 


	119. Chapter 119

“I thought you were dead.” 

“So, what, you moved into my room?” 

Bucky shrugs, still not looking away from the wholesale slaughter that’s taking place on the TV screen, Bucky’s hands moving quickly on the controls. 

“It’s a nice room,” he says. 

“I  _know_ ,” Clint complains, “that’s why I  _picked_  it.” He prowls around, picking things off the shelves, wondering why Bucky kept so much of his crap.  _All_  of his crap, maybe; he’s even wearing one of Clint’s goddamn sweatshirts. 

It’s a good point, actually, and Clint picks apart his knotted belt, shrugs off his jacket and goes to investigate the closet, looking for something purple. From the corner of his eye he can see Bucky turning to look, and then there’s the gentle shushing of beans shifting against bag and Bucky’s behind him, awful close, tracing a cool metal finger against his side. 

“This one’s new,” he says, and Clint shivers a little. Scar tissue ain’t exactly sensitive, but it’s been a while since he’s been touched, and  _Bucky Barnes_  is doing the touching. 

“Death was always a possibility,” he says, and Bucky’s hand curves around Clint’s hip, something possessive in the movement even before he pulls Clint back against him. 

“That’s why you stick with your damned team,” Bucky says, low and into his ear, and if he’d known this was something that could be waiting for him, if he’d suspected for even a second what Bucky’s stubble would feel like against his neck, he’d’ve come back to Hawkeye a whole hell of a lot sooner. 


	120. Chapter 120

“I dunno,” Clint said, waving the hand with the beer in it, and then brushing futilely at the puddle on his leg. “I guess I always just assumed clown was, like, a  _punishment_. Like, who grows up  _wanting_  to be a clown?”

“Me,” said the new clown. He was shorter than Clint and solid, long dark hair and pale eyes. He glared at everyone like he kinda wanted to kill them, and Clint wanted to climb him like a tree. 

“I can see that,” Clint said, and grinned all lopsided. “There’s a lot of joy in your soul.” 

Unexpectedly, the clown guy smiled at that, and fuck, maybe that’s why he didn’t do it all the time, because that thing could blind a person if they looked at it straight on. 

“That’s right,” clown guy said, “I’m a fuckin’ delight.” 


	121. Chapter 121

“It’s really not that complicated.”

“Yeah, for super geniuses, maybe.”

Natasha made a considering face. “I am pretty sure I understand it.”

“Me too,” said Steve, mouth quirked like he was laughing a little, and Clint’d walk out only it never paid to draw attention to a weak spot like that. Couldn’t help scowling at the table, though, couldn’t help shoving out of his chair once the briefing was done.

“Hey, Barton,” Bucky called, and Clint swore under his breath before turning.

“What?”

“You wanna go find Stark so he can explain it in small words?”

“Go fuck yourself, Barnes,” Clint snapped, betrayed to the core of him. “I can still shoot better than you.”

Bucky blinked. “Not gonna dispute that.”

“Then quit ragging on the guy with the junior high education, huh?”

Bucky shrugged, his mouth curved into a smile that was somehow inviting Clint to share in the joke.

“I was in full time work by the time I was 14, pal, half the shit these guys say goes straight over my head. Doesn’t stop me kicking Steve’s ass all over the gym. Like education says anything about how smart a guy is, anyway.”

Clint rubbed the back of his neck, awkward and a little guilty. “Sorry,” he said.

Bucky waved him away. “I get it. So, wanna ask Stark to explain it in little words?”

Clint cocked his head. “If you’ll come get a coffee with me after?”

“I may not be a genius,” Bucky said, “but I’m not dumb enough to pass that up.”

 


	122. Chapter 122

“You make me want things that I can’t have.” 

“What do you think you can’t have?” Clint rolled up onto his side, started picking grass seeds out of Bucky’s hair, running his fingers through it hypnotically. “I’ll fight whatever’s stopping you, you know that.” 

“I dunno,” Bucky said, “what does any guy want? House, marriage, kids. Dog, maybe.” 

“Dog  _definitely_ ,” Clint said, like it was something that they could actually  _have_. “What exactly is can’t about that?” 

 For a second, Bucky let himself imagine it. For a second, he let himself smile up at Clint like he pretty much always wanted to, soft and in love and stupid with it. 

“You see kids running around the tower?” he asked. “You see any decent agency letting us adopt in the first place? Pretty sure even the dog is pushing it, so far as responsibility goes.” 

Clint brushed hair away from Bucky’s forehead, and his small smile was kind of at odds with what Bucky was saying. 

“Seriously?” he said, not  _disbelieving_  precisely, but with a sort of dawning wonder that meant maybe believing was new. “You want that with me?” 

Bucky shrugged, long grass moving under his shoulders. “Pretty much want everything with you,” he said. 

“So this is the part where I tell you I’ve got a farm, huh?” Clint said, focused on smoothing some flyaway strands, maybe so he didn’t have to meet Bucky’s eyes. 

“Yeah?”

“I mean not yet, I get you’ve got that whole epic sense of responsibility for Steve, still, but when you’re ready…” 

“I got no clue what I did to deserve you,” Bucky said, reaching up to cup Clint’s cheek. 

“Something pretty terrible, I guess,” Clint said, and let himself be pulled down into a kiss. 


	123. Chapter 123

“I don’t owe you an explanation.” 

“The hell you don’t,” Steve yelled, storming across the helipad towards him, face like a thundercloud. “What kind of irresponsible jackass are you, that you’d miss -”

“Clint was going into surgery,” Bucky said, chin tilted up, defiant. “And fuck you if you think I’m gonna -”

“While your dedication to the team is  _appreciated_ ,” Steve said, holding onto his temper by a thread, “maybe you shoulda thought about the team that was actually going into  _battle_  instead of -”

“I’m in love with him,” Bucky said. “I wouldn’t’ve been any use to you anyway.” 

“Jeez, Buck,” Steve said, pushing his hood off and running a hand through his sweat-soaked hair. And for a minute there, he  _was_  Steve, Steve Rogers, the best friend he grew up with. Then Captain America kicked himself back in. “That’s still - you’ve still got to get yourself together. You can’t just cry off ‘cos your boy’s having minor -”

“One in ten chance he loses the use of the arm,” Bucky said, low and flat. “One in seven he doesn’t hold a bow again. Haven’t slept in a week ‘cos he keeps waking up hollering, scared to death that he’s gonna let you down.” Bucky let out a long breath. “You specifically, did you know that? About his serious case of hero worship? ‘cos I couldn’t help noticin’ you heading out on a mission without wishing him luck.” 

“That’s not - I didn’t -” 

“That ain’t your priority, maybe, but I gotta make him mine. So next time, how about you delay the mission ten minutes, like I  _asked_  you, and I’ll be a responsible jackass instead.”

“Love him, huh,” Steve said, the smooth transition to the best friend teasing grin seamless. “Seriously,  _Clint?”_

“Yeah, fuck you,” Bucky said, ducking the attempt to ruffle his hair. “I don’t owe you an explanation.” 


	124. Chapter 124

“I never stood a chance, did I?” Clint said, hopeless. Tony followed his line of sight, taking a moment to watch Bucky Barnes as he kicked an AIM agent off a roof. 

“You get that it’s weird that you think that’s hot, right?” 

“No, I know,” Clint said, “but it’s not just the -”

“- exceptionally gruesome violence -”

“ _Skilled fighting,”_  Clint said, defensive. “I mean, have you seen the guy smile?” 

“…one time I saw him grin at a guy’s corpse before kicking it,” Tony said thoughtfully. 

“Bullshit you did,” Clint said. Then he thought for a second. “Okay, maybe. But it was probably a bad guy.” 

“Y’know, that’s exceptionally reassuring.”

“There’s a possibility I’m in love with him.” Tony patted him comfortingly on the shoulder, still unable to tear his eyes away. 

“…did he just punch through that guy’s sternum?” he asked, half horrified, and Clint nodded, hand over his face pathetically. 

“Quickest way to a guy’s heart,” he said.


	125. Chapter 125

“I still remember the way you taste.” 

“Yeah?” Clint called into the shadows, hand clenched tight around splintering wood, “well I still remember which ribs to stake you between, asshole.” 

“Aaw,” Bucky said, stepping forward into the harsh white light thrown by the streetlight at the entrance to the alley, the sharply angled shadows doing fuckin’ beautiful things to his face. “Did our time together mean so little to you?” 

“ _Which_  time?” Clint asked. “That time you kidnapped me and threatened me a bunch? Or the time I saved your damn afterlife and you repaid me by making freaking  _holes_  in my  _neck_?” 

“Pretty sure I repaid you by not  _killing_  you,” Bucky said, casual as anything. He smirked and studied his nails. “And you can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy yourself, just a little.” 

“That was just, wotsit, Stockholm syndrome.” Clint’s hand flexed a little around the stake as Bucky moved towards him, slow and easily outrun, but he didn’t back away. 

“And the fact that you still jerk off thinking about me?” Bucky’s voice was low now, dark, a hungry light in his pale eyes. “That you see my face when you dream, is that Stockholm too?” 

“I dunno,” Clint said, and he should be walking away from this right now, he should be running for his fuckin’ life but he was just standing there, like an idiot, like  _cattle_. “I don’t -”

“You don’t -?” Bucky asked, running cool fingers over the skin of Clint’s neck. 

Clint swallowed, hard, and a shiver raced through him. “I don’t want to die,” he said, and Bucky smiled, sharp and dangerous. 

“Now where the hell would be the fun in killing you?” he asked. 

 

 


	126. Chapter 126

“And that’s Natasha,” Steve said, gesturing, “and over there is Clint.” 

“Hey,” Clint said, “welcome to the jungle,” and Bucky froze, stared at him through the hair that’d fallen over his face. 

“I’ve been waiting a long time,” he said, slow and careful, and Clint swore loudly and fell off the couch. 

“Did -” Steve said, wondering, “did you guys just -”

“Holy shit,” Clint said, “you are not kidding.” He sat himself up, frankly regarding Bucky, a long up and down look that made Bucky wish his last shower had been a little more recent. He pushed his metal hand through tangled, too-long hair, and shifted his weight. 

_Clint_  was - well, pretty much the definition of his type, actually, which he supposed was the point. 

“Grateful there’s no actual jungles,” Bucky offered after a minute, and Clint grinned. 

“I grew up figuring I’d find my soulmate at seventy, so this is a goddamn dream.” His eyes dropped down again, and when he caught Bucky’s eyes his own were dark with promise. “A  _really_  good one.” 

Steve sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I guess we’re holding off on the team bonding then, huh?” 

Bucky licked his lower lip. 

“Maybe give us a few days,” he said, and Clint grinned slow. 

“Maybe give us a week,” he said. 

 

 


	127. Chapter 127

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bondage

“I should have told you a long time ago,” Clint said, and Bucky snorted. 

“Goddamn right you should,” he said. 

Clint shrugged, awkwardly, bound wrists hampering him a little. “I grew up in the circus,” he said. “It was - formative.” 

“Escapology?” Bucky asked, picking up the flogger and running it through his fingers, butter soft leather against callused skin. 

“And the lion tamer,” Clint said. He was watching Bucky, and the heat in his eyes was something different, something new, even for how into him Clint had always been. “He was a beautiful man.” 

“Tread careful,” Bucky growled, and Clint’s tongue slid out to wet his bottom lip. 

“Don’t want to hear about him?” Clint asked, shifting on his knees. “About how he kissed me up against the wall of our caravan?” 

Bucky stepped forward, closer to the bed, and rested his knee on the mattress so Clint had to struggle to stay upright, shifting his knees wider. Bucky let his hand drop, trailing soft leather across Clint’s hard cock, soft noises catching in the man’s throat. 

“You’re mine,” he said, low and implacable, “and every time you goddamn move tomorrow you’re gonna feel it.” 


	128. Chapter 128

“I’m  _fine_ ,” Clint said, and Bucky folded his arms across his chest, scowling. 

“I don’t believe you.” 

“Well that ain’t your call.” He grabbed his bow and stalked off the ‘jet, with the stiff-legged walk of the terminally offended - or the idiot trying desperately to suppress a goddamned limp, of course. 

Bucky glared at Steve, who shrugged. 

“Man says he can fight,” he said, and Bucky let out a noise of helpless frustration. 

“Clint’d say he could fight if he was bleeding out on the sidewalk,” he said. “Clint  _has_  said he could fight while bleeding out on the goddamn sidewalk, in fact.”

Natasha pushed between them, heading after Clint. 

“Clint is not a child,” she said. “Worth remembering, I think.” 

“I’m a hundred goddamn years old,” Bucky yelled after her. “ _Everyone’s_  a child!”

“Not to butt in,” Tony said, landing on the cracked blacktop with his usual unnecessary dramatics, “but that’s maybe not the best frame of mind to approach a relationship with.” 

“I’ll listen to you about relationships, Stark, when you quit fucking up your own.” 

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve snapped, and Bucky scowled and marched out of the ‘jet, feeling kinda bad but not bad enough to apologise. 

“You’re being a fucking asshole,” Clint informed him when he joined him on the rooftop. 

“Congratulations,” Bucky said, “you’ve met me.” 

“Oh bullshit,” Clint said, “wouldn’t love you so much if you were this much of an asshole all the time.” 

“Wouldn’t worry so much if I didn’t love you so much,” Bucky countered, and Clint relaxed enough to smirk. 

“Touche.” 


	129. Chapter 129

“I want an answer, goddammit!”

“And you will have it,” the nurse told him calmly, “as soon as we have any more information to give you. Until then, Mr Rogers, we’d appreciate it if you’d take a seat.” 

“ _I’d_  appreciate it,” Bruce said, voice tight, “if you’d take a seat. Please.” 

Steve looked at him for a second, jaw visibly clenching, and then he let out a long breath and sat, rocking forward and clenching his hands into fists in his hair. 

Tony was over at the reception desk, attempting to sweet talk the duty nurse into providing more information; Natasha had her hand on Bruce’s back and was humming something, sweet and low. 

To Clint, it kinda felt like it was happening somewhere else. Somewhere a galaxy away. Maybe his aids were malfunctioning, ‘cos everyone sounded like they were talking underwater, but every clatter of the doors they weren’t allowed to go past was like a thunderclap in his head. 

He closed his eyes, stretched his legs out along the row of chairs he’d appropriated, folded his arms tight across his chest. 

“He can sleep at a time like this?” Steve asked someone, in a universe two steps over, and Clint focused his efforts on remembering how to breathe. 

Maybe he did sleep, a little, or maybe the universe - for once in his goddamned life - did exactly what he wanted and, for a time, went away. A clatter of thunder, a couple, a storm, and he pushed himself upright and stood shoulder to shoulder with Steve. 

There was blood on the doctor’s scrubs. 

 _Oh_ , Clint thought. His hand shot out without conscious thought and slapped against the solidity of the wall, kept him standing. 

“Mr Barnes,” he said, and Clint’s brain didn’t quite grab hold of that, slipped and skipped and took a second to refocus. 

“ - severe injuries,” the doctor was saying when he managed to tune back in, and her face was probably best described as sympathetic, which was possibly the worst expression that a face had ever worn. “His healing abilities were actively unhelpful when we tried to remove all the shrapnel, and he lost a significant amount of blood. Until he wakes up, we won’t know exactly the extent of the -”

“Until?” Clint interrupted, his voice about as steady as his legs. “So he’s - he’s gonna, you know that he’s -”

“Yes,” she said. “Absolutely.  _That_  at least is not in question.” 

“Oh,” Clint said, and it took a couple seconds of skewed perspective to notice that he had hit the floor. “Oh,  _shit_.” 

“Clint?” Steve asked, confused and worried in about equal measure, but there was no way Clint could answer all choked up like he was. 

“I think,” Natasha said carefully, “our archer’s in love.” 


	130. Chapter 130

“Prove it.” 

Clint giggled helplessly up at the ceiling, his barely closed hand caging his beer just enough that it didn’t fall off the arm of the couch. 

“Prove it?” he asked, and a metal finger appeared slowly in his view, followed by Bucky’s messy-haired, grinning face. 

“Prove it.” 

They’d been drinking for a few hours now, Bucky downing a bottle of vodka for every one of Clint’s beers, and sobriety had officially left the building. The  _whole building_ , ‘cos Clint was willing to believe that Bucky’s fumes had intoxicated all of his tenants. Someday he was gonna find something, some mode of being, that made him not wanna kiss the man, but today wasn’t the one. 

“What do I get if I do?” Clint asked, thoughtful, a little bolder than he might otherwise be.  

“Whatever your heart desires,” Bucky said, oddly serious for all of a second before he snorted, dropping his head onto Clint’s shoulder and giggling there. 

“Right,” Clint said, “right, help me up.” 

They just about managed, through physics, counterbalancing, and judicious and timely application of coffee table, to get Clint to his feet. There was that moment, that instant of sobriety when he dropped his hands to his waistband, where he worried whether this was the best idea. But - fuck it, he figured. Not like anyone here was under any delusions about his status as human disaster area. 

Clint dropped his pants, stuck his thumb in the waistband of his totally tasteful purple boxers and skinned them down far enough for Bucky to see the stark black writing against the pale skin of his ass. 

 **PROPERTY OF SHIELD,** it said, with a signature below that he’d learned to forge through carefully placed mirrors, ‘cos Coulson’d always been a guy with  _access_. 

“Holy  _shit_ ,” Bucky said, his hand going over his mouth. 

“I know, right?” Clint said. “I’m a classy guy.” 

He pulled his boxers back up, shrugged, and just kicked off his pants, leaving them tangled around the legs of a bar stool while he collapsed back next to Bucky. Bucky’s hand dropped to his leg and patted gently, sympathetically, and Clint had to bite down -  _hard_  - on his tongue. 

“So what do I owe ya?” Bucky asked, and Clint rolled his head against the back of the sofa so he could look at the guy, take him in in all his mussed up, flushed beautiful glory. He lifted his hand and, moving careful, tucked a strand of hair behind Bucky’s ear. 

“I want nothin’ from you I ever wanna coerce,” he said simply, smiling gentle and slow.


	131. Chapter 131

“I’m only here to establish an alibi,” Bucky said, out of breath and pulling off his jacket. “So make sure you remember my face.”

“Wow,” said the - waiter? Bucky wasn’t exactly sure what he’d put on a resume, since his job seemed to involve carrying shots around while wearing obscenely tiny purple booty shorts. “I’ve gotta wonder what the alternative is that could be  _worse_  than this place. Unless it’s murder.” The guy squinted at Bucky, blue eyes even brighter than the glitter sprinkled liberally through his blond hair. “Is it murder?” 

“Would I tell you if it was?” Bucky asked, smiling his most charming smile at the guy, who seemed unimpressed. With a set of abs like that, though, he was probably turning down hotter people than Bucky on an hourly basis. 

“You’re kinda sucking at this establishing an alibi thing,” the waiter told him, then pointed over towards the bar. “CCTV cameras are on the entrance, over the bar, and by the restrooms, so make sure you get your face on a couple. And quit insinuating that you shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” 

“Wow,” said Bucky, “smart  _and_  beautiful, huh?” And he had to admit to the little inward victory dance when the guy flushed a particularly pretty shade of pink. 


	132. Chapter 132

“People are staring.”

“That’s the crazy thing about being this side of the law, Buck,” Clint told him, waving like the queen one minute, shooting finger guns the next, clearly having the time of his life. “When people stare at us, it’s usually for  _good_  reasons.” 

“I don’t know if I like being this visible.” They were all standing on the steps of City Hall, the sea of reporters and spectators in front of them occasionally lapping up the steps and getting chased back by security. They were accepting something, or presenting something, or giving a speech about something - in all honesty, Bucky hadn’t really been listening. Steve was always the responsible one when it came to things like this, and Clint had managed to spill coffee all over himself in the meeting and had stripped off his shirt. Even after months of close contact, of as much time with shirtless Clint as he can possibly manage, he’s still helpless. The day Clint has to lose his shirt in battle is the day Bucky gets taken out by a DoomBot; his attention span evaporates on proximity with Clint’s goddamn back muscles. 

“Hey,” Clint says, and he’s leaning in close and speaking low, quiet enough that no one else has a chance of hearing it. “Let yourself be a hero, huh? Take a second and accept what everyone else around you sees.” 

“Swear to god you’re gonna kill me, Barton,” Bucky says, and Clint grins wide. 

“Nah,” he says, “not yet, not any time soon. I got plans for you and City Hall, someday, Bucky Barnes. Just you wait.” 


	133. Chapter 133

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arranged marriage AU

Agent Sitwell was a smooth, smart, faintly sarcastic sort of man, who abided by protocol precisely so far as it served his purpose; when it did not, he talked his way around to a point where it did, with no one else any the wiser. 

At present he was arguing with Rogers, who couldn’t give less of a damn for protocol when it didn’t match up with what was  _right_. Unstoppable force, immovable object, and this was only the first meeting. 

“There are concessions that Hydra believe should be made,” Sitwell was saying, a faint smile doing its very best to conceal the faint lines of tension around his eyes. “Given the numerous less than desirable traits of your designated candidate.” 

“Rude,” said Clint, unheeded by anyone except the Soldier, whose mouth curved up a little on one side. He really was even hotter than his photo, in person. Older, more rugged, his hair longer and unevenly cut, and with an added solidity and an edge of danger that was doing frankly alarming things to Clint’s stomach. 

“I’d thank you not to insult a member of my team,” Steve said, coldly. “Clint is a good man, a damned fine Avenger, and the best shot I’ve ever seen.”

“All excellent qualities in a husband, I’m sure,” Sitwell said, snidely. 

“As opposed to being a mercenary and assassin, I guess,” Steve answered acidly. 

“I’m sorry, should I be bringing up Agent Barton’s checkered resume?” 

Clint sidled over towards the door, trying to look casual and probably failing miserably as soon as he got a closer look at the Soldier’s arm. 

“Okay,” he said, quiet so as not to interrupt the negotiations, “that thing is just  _cool_.” 

The Soldier didn’t say anything, but he twisted his arm a little and clenched his fist, all the plates up the arm shifting and resettling. It was kinda hard to look at it as anything other than preening, and Clint was gonna take that as a good sign. 

“…already been married…” Clint caught, and he winced. That was a conversation he really wasn’t interested in hearing, frankly. 

“Hey,” he said, thoughtful. “You wanna get out of here?” 

“Pretty sure we’re supposed to wait until after the wedding,” the Soldier answered, his voice rusty but amused. Clint choked on a laugh, red flooding his cheeks. 

“Okay, interesting thought, but I was just… gonna show you the range.” 

“Range?” The Soldier said, cocking his head, his attention clearly caught, and Clint grinned properly for the first time since the whole marriage subject had originally come up. Maybe this could work out for them after all.


	134. Chapter 134

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuation of [this](https://winterhawkkisses.tumblr.com/post/163335316750/214)

Compliance. That’s pretty much what his village wanted from him. Compliance and quiet when Hydra came calling, when they took their share of whatever they figured they were entitled to without regard for how much was  _needed_. Clint was never much good with quiet, with compliance, but he was a  _hell_  of a shot with a bow. 

He wished he had it now, although whether he’d be shooting his escort was legitimately up for debate. There were  _things_  in the trees, things that rustled and growled and there were reasons the villagers stayed out of the forest, and they weren’t all  _him_. 

Him. Whoever  _he_  was. They’d always called him Winter’s Soldier, ‘cos that was when he came, once a year, as far as the lightning-struck tree and - provided there was tribute there - no further. In Clint’s memory they’d never failed to provide it, ‘cos there were stories. Stories that couldn’t possibly be true, not with the age of the man, but that sat well with his edge of darkness, the ashes around his eyes. 

Still. He was something to be feared, sure, but there was worse out in the darkness, and Clint scooted a little closer to the guy’s heels, his hands flexing around nothing, useless. 

“So what is it I’m here for?” Clint asked, and the tension in the man’s shoulders coiled a little tighter. “What d’you get out of this? ‘cos there are assumptions - virgins, obviously - but no one ever said if you made that request.” Clint grinned a little, blind, into the darkness. “If that’s your type, I hate to break it to you, but -”

“Quiet,” the Soldier snapped. He paused, looking up at the sky for a moment, the way it was edging from black to grey, and then abruptly changed their direction, heading over tumbled rocks and uneven ground. Clint swore and flailed and attempted to keep up, making enough noise for any three people, and by the time they came to the entrance to a low cave the Soldier looked about ready to murder him. 

Clint’d say it was better than the alternative, but he’d always favored men, and the Soldier was a damned fine specimen of one. 

Inside, the cave was dry at least but small, and the small cache of weapons, firewood, miscellaneous kit indicated that it was a stopping place and nothing like a home. Clint settled himself against a wall, held his hands out mutely when the Soldier grabbed a knife, ‘cos he was willing to offer compliance if it meant he could peel the rough rope away from where it’d bitten into his wrists. He groaned in mingled pain and relief when the knife sliced through, and he picked fibers away and regarded his mangled and bleeding skin with a sense of helplessness. 

The Soldier moved deeper into the cave and then tossed him something, and Clint caught it unerringly and then regarded the small clay pot with frustration, anger, that same sense of helplessness magnified a thousand times. He dipped his fingers into the slick ointment, rubbed it between them, set the clay pot carefully on the floor. 

“Guess I am your type, then,” he said, low and furious, and the Soldier slanted him a sideways look that was a little annoyed, a little amused. 

“For your  _wrists_ ,” he said. 


	135. Chapter 135

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disney AU

Clint hauled himself over the window sill, arms aching after the arduous climb. The inside of the tower was darker than he would’ve expected, lit by only one window, and the only furniture he could see was a chair that looked like a barber-surgeon’s nightmare. Everything else was dust-coated and dull, but the chair gleamed like a hungry wolf’s grin. 

“Er,” he said, and his voice almost startled him, unexpectedly loud in the silence. “So this looks bad.” 

“You have no idea,” a voice said from the darkness, cold and rusty and flat. 

The long hair was the first thing he noticed, long and ragged as though it’d been cut with a knife; the barber-surgeon was slacking on at least one part of his trade. The next thing to notice should have been the amount of dark leather, pants and sleeves and fingerless gloves, should have been the odd glimmer of his fingers in the darkness, but Clint’s attention was taken by the weapon held ready to strike. 

“Is that… a frying pan?”


	136. Chapter 136

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fairytale AU

“You know this is ridiculous, right?”

“Oh believe me,” the prince said, his hair elegantly clubbed at the back of his neck, his suit darker than the fashion but still expensively cut and beautifully turned out, and yet still managing to look like something alien to the setting, something wild. “I am well aware of that.” He shot a glare over to the corner of the room, where Tony and Steve were conspiring together, standing perhaps a little closer than propriety allowed. 

“What in hell’s name made you think I’d come?” 

Clint had found himself a suit for the occasion, battered and sawdust-powdered and too big. He hadn’t the slightest doubt that he looked painfully ridiculous, but he felt rather as though he was staring at a play, as though he was an invisible audience, unregarded by those who weren’t truly part of his world. 

“You’re here, aren’t you?” The prince said, and Clint shrugged and conceded the point; he’d been far too curious about the invitation to refuse it. 

They stood in uncomfortable silence for a moment or two, watching the elegant spin of couples and oversized dresses. 

“Want to dance?” The prince asked diffidently. 

“Can’t,” Clint answered, and the way the other man’s shoulders straightened, unconscious movement, a guard against revealing themselves by slumping, indicated he cared rather more about Clint’s answer than his tone would suggest. 

Damn it, Clint thought. 

“Want to go out on the balcony and press me up against something again?” Clint asked, low and mischievous and met by a flare of heat in the prince’s eyes. 


	137. Chapter 137

Bucky watched as Clint scaled the side of the building, ignoring the rusted and precarious fire escape in favour of fingertip holds on windowsills, impossible footholds, improbable stretches. 

“Guy’s flexible,” he said, off-hand, to Natasha. 

“You’re having a thought,” she said, amused. “A lot of people have that thought. Then they get to know him.” 

“Huh,” Bucky said. 

Then he got to know him. 

Late night commiserating over nightmares with ice cream and crappy TV. Post-mission banter and paper airplane wars. Trick shot battles at the range - which Clint always won, of course, ‘cos Hydra didn’t exactly value the ability to shoot while upside down. 

Bucky started to value time spent with Clint over any other activity. Started to value Clint’s smiles over any other sight. Three months in he leaned against a wall next to Natasha, thoughtful silence between them. 

“You’re still having a thought,” she said. 

Bucky stayed silent. 

“If you hurt him,” she said, and he almost half-smiled, ‘cos he’d given the few dates Steve’d ever managed that talk, too. “I’ll wait for him to be done with you,” she said, “and then kill you.” 

“He won’t kill me?” Bucky asked, amused. 

“He likes you,” Natasha told him. Bucky looked at her sidelong, put a little offended into his tone. 

“You don’t like me?” 

“I don’t  _love_  you,” she said, and he blinked, blinked again. 

“He -”

“His balance is exceptional,” she said, “but he falls fast and  _hard_. Don’t get into this if you’re not ready for that.” She pushed away from the wall, continuing without looking around him, at the mess of confusion that currently showed on his face. “Don’t hurt him.”

“I don’t wanna hurt him,” he said, soft, low, more revealing than he meant it. 

“That’s not even nearly the same thing,” she said. 


	138. Chapter 138

“We could get arrested for this.” 

“I have warrants out for my arrest in at least seven countries,” Clint said, shrugging. “Plus I figure, avenging, there’s a little leeway.” 

“Only seven?” Bucky asked, the irresistible smirk Clint rarely saw curling the edge of his mouth. 

“Some of us have an average lifespan, pal. Gimme seventy years and I’ll have warrants throughout the damned galaxy.” He cupped his hands together, lowered them in front of Bucky, but the only response was a contemptuous look. Instead, Bucky yanked at the chickenwire until it parted under his hand, folding back the fence and waving Clint through. 

“The  _aim_  is not to get arrested,” Clint complained. 

The signs attached to the fence were so old as to be almost unreadable, rusting and pockmarked and sun faded. Inside, nature was taking over, saplings growing through cracks in the concrete, ivy climbing through broken windows that stared out of the old ramshackle building. 

“Why’re we here?” Bucky asked, and Clint beckoned to him, leading the way across the crack-mazed forecourt and up broken steps, pushing open a blue-painted door with the squeal of rusted hinges. 

“It used to be a high school,” Clint said, his voice hushed in the stillness. “There was an incident with a chemical spill and a horde of mutated wildlife; some kid from the archery club made a dent, but the school ended up condemned.”

“I thought you ran away to the circus,” Bucky said, and Clint grinned. 

“I was in and out of schools any time it was the off-season,” he said, “and besides, who said it was me?” 

“I dunno,” Bucky said, “archer, dumbass heroics, stupidly brave - sounds familiar.” 

Clint ducked his head and grinned at the floor, holding one hand behind him for Bucky to grab hold of. 

“Totally-not-me kid had his locker on this hallway,” Clint said, and then laughed a little when he saw the solid metal rank of lockers, still in place. He gave Bucky a sideways, mischievous grin and headed straight for two down, three across, not bothering with the combination but smacking it precisely in three different spots. It popped open with a clatter, and a couple of moth-chewed books fell out. Bucky’s attention, though, was caught by the poster pasted to the inside of the metal door - vintage, faded, and a little painful in its familiarity. A group shot: the Commandos, grinning wide and standing tall; the picture had been pasted so that Bucky was front and center. 

“So when I said ‘from the first time I saw you…’” Clint said, leaning back against the lockers and folding his arms across his chest, his smile doing nothing to conceal the pink on his cheeks. 

“I honestly don’t know whether to be flattered or disturbed,” Bucky said, and Clint snorted. 

“You’d be surprised how often I hear that,” he said. 

“So.” Bucky placed his metal hand against the lockers, leaned in close. “How many times did you picture this?” he asked, watching Clint’s pupils widen, his eyes flutter closed, as Bucky leaned in for high-school kisses, a little hot, a little desperate, full of promise. 


	139. Chapter 139

“All the leaves are brown,” Bucky sang, bopping a little more than he needed to ‘cos Clint’s nauseous noises were kinda hilarious, “and the sky is gray -”

“’nskyz gray,” Clint mumbled helpfully. 

“I been for a walk -”

“fra walk -”

“On a winter’s day -”

“Wnter soldier daaaaay -”

“Oh, archer’s got jokes, huh?” Bucky said, dipping his shoulder a little so Clint flailed and almost fell off, grabbing hold of Bucky’s shirt and moaning faintly. “How about I laugh your ass onto the sidewalk, huh? How about you walk yourself home?” 

“Nooooo,” Clint said, “I’m dyin’“. 

“You’re an easy drunk, that’s what you are,” Bucky said, hauling Clint up into a slightly less precarious position and cutting down the alley by his building. 

“Not easy,” Clint said. “Playin’ hard. To get.” 

“You got your eye on someone?” Bucky asked, and now he was the one feeling a little nauseous. 

“Alla my eyes,” Clint said. “Can’t look anywhere else. Whole time, right in fronna me.” 

“Natasha?” Bucky asked, kinda incredulous, ‘cos if there was something there they hid it well. 

“Nah,” Clint said. “Right in fronna me,” and he gave Bucky’s butt a friendly pat. 


	140. Chapter 140

“Hey Tony!” Clint yelled, turning halfway around on the couch, balancing precariously with one elbow dug deep into the cushions, looming half over Bucky. “Tony, your porn sucks!” 

“Bite me, Barton,” Tony yelled back, doing something complicated-sounding with the coffee machine. 

“Um no,” Clint hollered, “judging by this shit you’d  _like_  it too much!” 

“Remind me why we’re watching Tony’s shitty porn?” Bucky asked, looking up at Clint, firmly in the eye, trying not to look at how Clint’s twisting had made his shirt ride up a little. 

“‘cos I have a curious goddamn soul,” Clint said, “and -” 

He’d turned back a little, to talk to Bucky, and then he turned fully and dropped onto the couch again with a thump, one hell of a lot closer to Bucky than he’d been. 

“Oh for fuck’s -” he said, “this is just - no one can hold that position that long, that’s just fuckin’ -”

“Not entirely clear how he got into it in the first place,” Bucky observed. 

“Oh, getting  _into_  it’s no problem,” Clint said, regarding the panting, sweating guy with a professional’s eye, “but without proper support you’re gonna put your back out in two, maybe three minutes. Especially with all the -”

“Thrusting,” Bucky said, kinda enthralled. 

“Right.” Clint tilted his head. “If they tried it over a table, maybe, I could see that workin’.” 

“With an acrobat, maybe.” 

“I’m an acrobat,” Clint said, casual, and when Bucky turned his head he caught the guy’s eye, the considering look he was giving him. 

“Huh,” said Bucky, and licked his lips. 

*

When Tony came through from the kitchen there was a discarded shirt on the coffee table, and it was getting a little hard to tell where one guy ended and the other began. On the screen, too. 

“Hate to break it to you, boys,” he said, “but this one’s Steve’s.”


	141. Chapter 141

Clint had made a hell of a lot of concessions since Bucky moved out of Steve’s quarters and moved into his apartment, he’d like that noted for the record. 

Admittedly he hadn’t had to give up quite as much as Bucky had - Bed-Stuy wasn’t exactly a match for Stark Tower, he got that, and the roof wasn’t quite so good as Tony’s range - but still, there’d been changes. Black out curtains in the bedroom. A fancier coffee machine that Clint hadn’t quite worked out how to use. Picking up after himself so Bucky didn’t fall down the stairs in the middle of the night. (Again.)

This, though, this was a bit much. 

“Can you quit measuring the windows?” Clint asked, trying and failing to concentrate on  _Dog Cops_. 

“Need to get a quote,” Bucky said, snapping the tape measure closed decisively. 

“Yeah,” Clint grumbled, “not sure where you think I’m gonna get the money for bulletproof glass anyhow. The renovations after the Russians pretty much cleared me out.” 

“I’ve got back pay,” Bucky said, shrugging, stepping over Clint’s legs and blocking his view of Inspector Rex being adorable, dammit. 

“Yeah, and you’re  _bulletproof_ , essentially.” Clint twisted around on the couch - screw it, he was gonna have to watch this episode again anyway - and watched Bucky march over to the tiny unregarded window under the staircase. “I mean seriously, how long does it take you to heal?” 

Bucky glowered at him from under the staircase. “Fuck, you’re an idiot,” he said. 

“Hey, look, I’m just pointing out the obvious, here. I mean, justifiable paranoia, maybe, but of all the things that could kill you -”

The tape measure slithered closed again, and Bucky stood in silence for a moment. His voice, when it drifted out of the shadows, was slow and frustrated and calling Clint all kinds of colors of idiot. 

“Whose apartment is it, Clint?” he asked. 

“Mine, obviously. Or -” he could feel himself getting a little pink. “Well, ours, I gue- Oh. Shit.  _I’m_  not bulletproof.” 

“You fuckin’ idiot,” Bucky said, and somehow it sounded like another three words entirely. 


	142. Chapter 142

Clint was leaning back against the headboard, and Bucky was between his legs, low enough that Clint could rest his chin on the top of his head. Robot butlers - which sent Tony crazy whenever he said it, the gross oversimplification even more fun, therefore, to say - were good for a lot, but lowering the room temperature to ‘bearable when covered in Bucky’ had to be right up the top. 

Bucky shrugged his shoulder a little, and Clint obligingly turned the page. Superman’s heat vision was drying up a flooded city, steam rising against the violently blue-inked sky. There was a smear of chocolate just at the edge of the page; Barney’d borrowed this once, then. 

“I don’t get it,” Bucky said, and Clint snorted. 

“Hey, don’t knock the thing that made you famous,” he said, and even from the back of Bucky’s head he could tell the guy was scowling. 

“Yeah, as a kid, which is weird on levels I don’t wanna go into.” 

“So that’s your beef with the comics?” Clint asked. 

“No, I just don’t - I mean, this guy’s  _boring_. He’s basically magic, he can superpower his way out of anything, what kind of interesting story comes outta that?”

Clint leaned in, grinning, and nosed up the back of Bucky’s ear. 

“That’s what a superhero  _is_ , genius,” he said. 

“…you know that’s bullshit though, right?” 

“Huh?” Clint shifted back a little when Bucky flailed around, hampered by the blankets and kicking them away as he rolled to kneeling in front of Clint, searching his face - for what, Clint had no clue. 

“Clint, you know -” Bucky examined the blank expression Clint was pretty sure he was wearing and tried another tack. “Okay,” he said, slow and careful, “what is it that you do?” 

“I - shoot things?” he said, uncertainly. 

“Okay. And Steve, what does he do?” 

“He saves people,” Clint answered, instant and sure. 

“And how is that different from what you do?” he asked. 

Clint frowned, honestly confused now. 

“He’s in charge,” he said. “He tells me what to do, I do it. Point and shoot.” 

“So I’m not a hero, then,” Bucky said, flat, and Clint reached out instantly, cupping his cheek in his hand. 

“No, Buck, of course you’re -”

“I save people, right?” Bucky said, a little frown creasing the skin between his eyebrows. 

“Absolutely,” Clint said. 

“And I follow Steve’s orders so we can save people,” he said, and he didn’t  _sound_  uncertain but Clint had to make sure. 

“You’re amazing, Bucky, you’re a goddamn hero.” 

“And I’ve got super strength, healing, eyesight, a kickass metal arm… So what would you call a guy without all that, who did everything I do?”

“I -” Clint said, stumped. “I guess…” 

“That’s what a superhero  _is,_  genius,” Bucky said, and leaned in to kiss his slack, surprised mouth. 


	143. Chapter 143

“I’ve missed this.” 

Clint made the sort of vaguely inquisitive noise that’d served sleepy partners for the length of recorded history, and Bucky obligingly continued like they were mid-conversation, like his contribution was valid. 

“I know, it should be the sex, right?” 

Clint hummed again. 

“And I thought that’d be - I mean, not that I got around, but -” 

He huffed out a breath, and Bucky echoed it in a laugh. 

“Yeah, I know, standards are different. But this, this I missed, but -” 

His voice died away for a minute, long enough for Clint to rouse himself, shove up on his elbows enough to press a kiss just at the notch where his henleys buttoned, that little patch of skin that always looked lacking a kiss. 

“But in the way you miss something you never had,” Bucky said, quiet and meditative. “Like I knew I was missing it, but I never knew what shape it should be until I had you here.” 

Bucky laughed a little to himself, in the darting tv static of not quite dark, and smoothed a palm over the back of Clint’s head. 

“I’m glad you ain’t awake for the soppy shit, ‘cos you’d only argue against it.” And then he ducked down, close enough that Clint could barely feel the warmth of his breath, just on the edge of sleep. “Gonna hide the ‘love you’ in your dreams.”


	144. Chapter 144

The nights when he saved someone were the worst. 

Not the nights he lost someone - correction, there’d never  _been_  a night he’d lost someone. No one had drowned on Beech Point in the last thirty years, and that’d been a large part of the reason Bucky’d taken the job. He wasn’t sure he’d’ve survived that, but the guilt that still weighed heavy on his shoulders wouldn’t let him take any job that wouldn’t somehow  _help_. 

Jayqwon Marshall was tiny and chubby and not all that popular, so no one but Bucky’d noticed when he’d drifted away a little, stopped paying attention, stayed too still. It’d been a simple enough rescue, barely even so deep as his chest; hadn’t even needed mouth to mouth or CPR. His brain had been full of what-ifs, though, too big for his tiny beach-front house, and he’d had to come back down to the water. 

The ocean was invisible in the darkness. Didn’t happen often this time of the year, and when there was any sort of moon it didn’t happen at all. But tonight all there was was the sound of the sea, a gentle hushing that soothed Bucky’s mind clean as he stared out over the endless black. 

Until there was a noise that didn’t belong. A soft splash too big to be anything that should be this close to this shore. 

“Fuck,” a soft curse, out of place in the darkness, then rustling. “Aaw,  _net_.” 

“Is someone out there?” Bucky called, and the dark got a little more pointedly silent, like someone holding their breath. “You shouldn’t - it’s not safe out here at night.”

There was another flopping sorta splash, a struggle that Bucky woulda thought was a big fish if there wasn’t some very human curses to go along with it. 

Eventually it stilled, and the voice came again, breathless this time. 

“Hey,” the man said. “Hi. Little help?” 

It was coming from the left of him, from the little jetty where kids fished for crabs, where little boats bobbed in the drawn in tide. Bucky made his way over, picking carefully between shell fragments that were cruel to bare feet. 

“The fuck are you doing out here?” Bucky asked, and a voice came from closer than he’d have thought. 

“Look, if I’m not supposed to be here, you’re not supposed to be here, so how about you give me a hand and neither of us tells the hot lifeguard.” 

Bucky was glad for the darkness. 

“Too late,” he said, and waded out into the sea, waves dragging against his legs a little like a playful pet. 

“Aaw,” the voice came again, and it sounded so resigned that Bucky laughed a little, waded closer. “How is this my  _life?”_

“You go swimming at night you get what you’re given,” Bucky said. He was starting to see a shape now, grainy in the bare light from far-off street lamps, a guy who was bare-chested and shoulder-deep even in the shallow water, sitting or reclining and wrapped around with a net. 

“How the hell did you -?” Bucky asked, sloshing closer so he could get a better look, try and work out where to start. 

“I’m pretty special,” the guy said, and the shadows on his face changed enough to suggest a grin. 

“Hang on,” Bucky said, and he pulled his phone out of the pocket in his cargo shorts, fumbling for the flashlight. 

“No,” the guy yelped, holding his hand out, “wait -”

The glare of white light blinded Bucky for a second, and the man in the water lifted a hand to shield his eyes, swearing under his breath. 

Bucky did, too, when he got a closer look. When he saw that the net wasn’t tangled around pale hairy legs like it should be, but was instead wrapped and caught around a slickly scaled iridescent purple tail. 


	145. Chapter 145

Bucky comes through the door as quietly as he’s able, which is pretty damned quiet even with the tired that’s weighing down his bones. ‘cos they’re classy as hell, there’s folded newspaper by the door for the boots they’re too tired to clean right away; the rest of his clothes get left in the bottom of the shower, leaking rusty brown down the drain with the dirt that was left on him. 

Clint’s left the laundry too long again, so the only towel left’s the bleach-stained blue one that’s old enough they can’t even tell which hotel it’s stolen from any more. Sometimes they bicker about it, when they’ve run out of actual fights. It’s kinda scratchy, kinda stiff, and better than any plush bath sheet in any hotel on the planet. 

(Bucky laughs at himself in the mirror as he attempts to scrub some of the water out of his hair with a washcloth. He’s been gone too damned long if he’s getting sentimental about a fuckin’ towel.)

He makes his quiet way through the apartment, aided by the little gentle nightlights Clint’s got plugged into every damn outlet, ‘cos he’s helpless when he’s half asleep. 

Ain’t nothing half about the snores rattling out of their bedroom, and Bucky laughs again. Clint snores somethin’ awful but only when he’s on his own, sprawled out on his back in the middle of the bed. Bucky watches him for a second or two, his rumpled hair, the dark circles under his eyes, his slack drooling mouth, and there’s not even the barest doubt. He gave his heart to this mess of a human being, and he can’t see himself ever taking it back. 

Clint stirs a little when Bucky lifts the blanket and slides onto the mattress, half waking enough to roll onto his side, stopping the god-awful noise. 

“Bucky bear,” he says, mumbled and indistinct, and Bucky’s gonna keep that one saved in the mocking bank for sometime  _special_. He slides his hand across Clint’s side, edging under the sleep-warm shirt, and curls it around him, then flinches abruptly back as he hits something cold and a little soggy. 

“Holy - what the fuck?” he hisses, and pulls down the blanket far enough to see a bag of peas wrapped in a dish towel, cold and leaking onto the sheets. He picks it up and tosses it onto the floor, pulling Clint’s shirt up a little further, pressing his fingers against cooled flesh and checking for discoloration.

“Whatcha doin’?” Clint says on a yawn, eyes flickering halfway open. 

“You hurt yourself?” he asks, accusing, and Clint frowns. 

“No, what -”

“The ice pack, asshole,” Bucky growls, and Clint smiles slow and sleepy and a little stupid. 

“Missed yer arm,” he mumbles, and tucks himself back into the curve of Bucky’s body, hauling Bucky’s left arm over his middle and pulling his shirt down over the top of it. 

Bucky blinks at the back of his head for a second, and buries his smile in pillow-rumpled blond hair. 


	146. Chapter 146

“…just the one room for you two gents?” The receptionist says, her polite smile freezing in place. Clint turns back to Bucky and gives him an exaggerated eye-roll, opens his mouth to - who knows, with Clint. Could be to change the booking, inconvenient as that would be, could be to make a lewd joke. Before he can say a word, Bucky steps in close, pressed up against his back, and wraps an arm around his waist.

“We’re on our honeymoon,” he says, making and maintaining eye contact long past the comfortable. Everything about his posture is precisely calculated to ask if the viewer’s got a problem with that; everything is calculated to make sure they fuckin’ don’t.

“Congratulations,” the woman says tightly, and she lowers her eyes and types rapidly on the computer, scanning in two room keys and handing them over with careful fingers, making sure not to make contact with Clint’s calloused hand.

“Yeah, we’re very happy,” Clint says, bending to grab his bag, but Bucky’s not quite done. He’s standing too close when Clint straightens up, his eyebrow cocked the way it always is when he’s got himself a plan. And Clint reads his mind - way he always does - and grins a little mischievous grin that shivers all the way down to Bucky’s toes.

It’s brief, perfectly appropriate, nothin’ that belongs behind doors, just a quick brush of lips, the barest touch of Clint’s tongue. Bucky doesn’t even bother looking for the reaction, just hauls his bag onto his shoulder and heads for the elevators, ‘cos they might have a problem in the fact that he didn’t want to stop.


	147. Chapter 147

“You really are,” Sam panted, “a pair of assholes.” He tensed up his shoulders and folded in the wings, bracing for the jolting they’d never managed to engineer out of ‘em. 

“And yet,” Clint said, folding his hands on top of Bucky’s head and resting his chin on them, hunched over like a gargoyle just to make a point, “still both better shots than you.” 

It had been something to fuckin’ see, Sam couldn’t argue with that one. Bucky’d been double-fisting, gun in each hand, picking off Hydra agents that dared get close enough to be in range. Sitting in his shoulders, Clint effortlessly shifted to keep his balance as he nocked and drew, firing perfect shot after perfect shot and making the rest of them look bad. 

Bucky shook his head, dislodging Clint’s hands like you would a fly, but Clint was never that easy. 

“Hands up,” he said, and Bucky raised one hand, his metal arm held in front of his chest so Clint could push off it with one foot, holding Bucky’s other hand to keep him steady as he got one foot on Bucky’s shoulder, then the other. 

Bucky shifted his weight a little, settling in place, then hooked his hands behind Clint’s knees to keep him steady. 

“Oh shit,” Clint said, “Steve’s coming,” and he clambered down awkwardly until he was making like a koala, hangin’ off Bucky’s back and attempting to hide behind his head. 

“What in hell’s name is going on here?” Steve yelled, red-faced and tousled and reassuringly human in the way that let Sam hope. 

“He won a bet,” Bucky said, resigned, as Clint yelled from behind his head. 

“THE FLOOR IS LAVA!”


	148. Chapter 148

“So what’s it like to be the only one without superpowers on a team like the Avengers?” The host asked, his ruler-straight teeth gleaming a little unnervingly under the studio lights.

“I’m assuming you mean ‘the only one who makes it obvious,’” Clint said, with an only slightly forced grin. “'Cos Black Widow’s been a part of all this before they recruited me.”

“Right,” the host says. He’s obviously a little uncomfortable, tries a wink and a grin to salvage it. “Well can you blame me if it’s not her skills I focus on?”

“Oh wow,” Clint said, backed up by a couple of outraged noises from the audience. “Wow, I’m gonna really enjoy telling her you said that.”

“Am I going to enjoy it?” The guy asked, and Clint sat back on his seat, resting his foot on the opposite knee, and rocked his hand back and forth.

“Guess it depends how good your security is at home,” he said, and the audience laughed. The host didn’t.

There was a moment’s awkward silence and then Clint’s phone trilled. “Aw, phone,” he said, and yanked it out of his pocket, but the studio lights had made his palms sweaty enough to fumble it, and the host - Clint hadn’t really listened to his name - smoothly picked it up.

“Sorry,” Clint said, “I know you guys said to turn it off, but -”

“But you’re an important guy. 'The Fugitive,’” he read out, exaggerated curiosity in his expression. “Is that the Hulk calling?”

“Hulk doesn’t so much use phones,” Clint said. “That’s Bucky - er, James Barnes, the Winter Soldier.”

“Think he’d be up for a chat?” The host asked, and Clint genuinely startled at the screams from the audience.

“Er,” he said, “I don’t -”

His deferral came a little too late.

“Hey, Bucky Barnes,” too loud and too brash, and Clint winced a little at Bucky’s imagined expression. “This is Dick Travers, MidWest Tonight. We’ve got a few people eager to hear from you, here.”

Another round of screaming and Clint flinched and slapped his hands to his aids, hurriedly turning them down.

“ - of them Clint?” Bucky drawled, sounding unimpressed even muted.

“He’s right here,” Travers said, “say hi, Clint!”

“Hey, Buck,” Clint said, apologetic as he knew how.

“Hey, Clint,” Bucky said, and his tone was hard to read at this volume. “We’ll talk when you get back, right?”

Clint was starting to feel a little overwhelmed in all honesty - usually the more media-friendly Avengers were roped into this kind of shit, he and Bucky mostly got left at home, sniggering together on the couch at how uncomfortable Steve always looked. Bucky’s voice, too soft, in front of a studio audience helped a little, but Clint would rather be leaning against his side, hearing his voice up close in his ear.

“You haven’t got time to chat?” Travers asked, and Bucky’s voice wasn’t exactly friendly in response.

“If I had time I’d get roped into talking to you, so I’m gonna be busy for as long as I can,” Bucky said, and Clint could almost hear Steve tearing his hair out. “Hang in there, Clint.”

He was such an asshole. Clint couldn’t hide his grin.

“Later Buck,” he said, “love you.”

And for five confusing seconds, he had no clue what the audience was screaming about.


	149. Chapter 149

“Okay,” Clint said, sounding weird, a sort of restrained excitement to his tone, “and no one’s seen them in daylight, right?” he asked. 

“I’m pretty sure no one’s seen the exsanguinating murderers at all,” Tony said, “but we’d better be seeing them soon if we want to get the damned WSC off our backs.” 

“This,” Clint said solemnly, “is the best day of my life.” 

He slung the bag he’d been carrying onto the cracked concrete of the alley; inside it, something sloshed. 

“There’s something seriously wrong with you,” Sam said, and Clint looked up from his unzipping to give him a slightly manic, beaming smile. With his hair all pushed out of place by the nightvision goggles he was wearing on top of his head, he looked like some kinda crazy scientist, and Bucky really shouldn’t be finding him as attractive as he did right now goddammit. 

“I,” Clint said, “have the solution.” 

He started passing out brightly colored plastic - Bucky kinda hesitated to call them ‘guns’ ‘cos it was an insult to good weaponry. His sloshed as he turned it over, examining it carefully. 

“You gotta -” Clint said, and made the kind of hand gesture that pre-teen boys delighted in. Bucky stared at him, one eyebrow raised. 

“Jeez, Clint,” Sam said, and showed them with the gun what he’d meant, pumping it up and priming it to fire. 

“And this is - ?” Tony asked. 

“Holy water,” Clint said, smug as anything. “They’re clearly vampires.” 

There was a pause. Natasha broke it, swearing in Russian. 

“You’re an idiot,” Sam told Clint seriously, and Bucky’d usually argue just for the sake of arguing with Sam, even if it wasn’t Clint he was going for, but this time he might have to admit the guy had a point. 

“I am a  _genius,”_ Clint said, and picked up his own water pistol, firing it over Steve’s shoulder and hitting something that hissed, screeched, melted like some kinda bad movie effect. 

The Avengers stared in genuine, open-mouthed astonishment. 

“Well spank my ass and call me Buffy,” Clint yelled, jubilant. “It  _worked_.” 

Steve swiftly split them up, not willing to argue with what worked, no matter how ridiculous. Bucky sidled up next to Clint, under cover of grabbing another gun from the bag. 

“As a war cry, it could use some work,” he said, amused. 

“Not a war cry,” Clint said, and turned to grin at him, wide and bright and way too close. “More like a request.” 


	150. Chapter 150

Clint counted out the stack of bills, laughed a little through a throat that was kinda sore, this time of the night. He’d broke about even, after gas money and the couple drinks he’d had, the new strings he’d had to shell out for after Jess found out about the accidental redhead. Bartender always told him he’d probably do better for tips if he didn’t insist on covering so much Dolly Parton, but the woman was a goddess, and Clint wasn’t gonna apologise for that. 

He tipped his hat at Katie and she rolled her eyes at him, wiping a cloth across the bar like it’d ever be clean, like there was anything holding it together aside from spilled beer and sadness. 

This late, the bar was almost empty, and if you squinted your eyes almost closed it could be welcoming, kinda place everyone knew your name. Course, if you squinted your eyes almost closed some asshole’d steal your drink for starters, so Clint settled for buzzing neon and stained pool tables, the tape-patched seat of the chair that was practically his. 

He zipped his guitar case closed and swung it onto his back, hitched himself far enough over the bar’s hatch to fetch the duffel that held his bow. After a day working the farm, afternoon of archery, evening right here, tiredness was pulling at the edges of the day, stretching everything out like taffy. He yawned as he headed out the door at the back, by the men’s room, turning to the right and then heading in a straight line that cut across the scrubby grass they billed as a garden, vaulted the low fence and fetched up right by his truck. 

He heaved his guitar and his bow into the carpet-lined alcove set aside for them, started threading the blue nylon rope across the top. It was a little tough to see what he was doing with the lights blown out, and he managed to get his fingers caught somehow. 

“Aaw, rope,” he said sadly, which was when his day  _really_  went to shit. 

“Gimme your wallet,” a voice said behind him, rough and tired in the darkness. “Guitar, too. And whatever’s in the bag.” 

Clint carefully wiggled his fingers free from whatever screw-up he’d made of the rope and turned around slow, hands held a little away from his sides. 

There wasn’t much to be seen. Ragged-cut dark hair spilling out from under a ball cap, over-sized army coat with one sleeve tied in a knot, boots that honestly looked a little more hole than leather right now. His face looked hollowed out in the shadow, his eyes glinting in the darkness, his teeth where he was chewing on his lip, the knife he held. 

“Okay,” Clint said, in his low soothing voice, the one he had legitimately used to talk down lions. “Counter-offer. I give you the cash I made tonight, you leave the guitar and bow, and I take you somewhere I can get you a meal and a change of clothes.” 

“This ain’t a negotiation, pal,” the man said, and Clint shrugged apologetically. 

“Look, bro, if it comes to it, I’m gonna win. You gotta work from the assumption that I’m gonna win, okay, ‘cos I’m ex-army and I was fuckin’ good at my job. And I figure you’ve served yourself -” the hand holding the knife lowered slightly, hooah! - “but you’re down at least a few square meals. So let me help you out.” 

“And why’m I gonna trust you?” 

Maybe Clint was misreading his tone completely - his aids always fucked up a little after a night of singing - but there was something that he thought was willing to be persuaded, there. 

“No clue,” Clint said, “but you can ask the bartender inside if I’ve ever been any more of an asshole than your average fuck-up.” 

He just looked  _tired_ , most of all. Like the world had always weighed on his shoulders, but lately it’d been hanging a little heavier. He pushed up his ball cap a little, looked Clint up and down, and the bone structure under the exhaustion and the malnutrition and the distrust was like somethin’ out of a painting. Clint found his mouth was suddenly, inexplicably dry, and he cast around desperately for something to say - the crates resting in the back of his truck saved him. 

“I’m not offering fine dining,” he said, like that was the decider here. “I’ve got… well, beets, mostly. Mostly beets.” 

“I, er.” The guy took a step forward, hesitant. “I lived in Russia a while. I can make a pretty good borscht.” 

“Then I am glad to meet you, ‘cos if there’s something Iowa doesn’t offer it’s a decent borscht.” Clint held out his hand. This was the tipping point, he figured, the more so for a guy with one arm. The guy who regarded him for a second and then tucked his knife in the back of his pants so he could shake his hand. 

“I’m Clint,” he said. “Clint Barton. I own the Barton farm, clue’s in the name, if you’ve got someone you wanna tell.” 

“Bucky,” the guy said. There was grime ground into the lines of his palm, and he looked a little self-conscious when he pulled his hand back. 

“Got a last name to go with that?” Clint asked, rounding the back of the truck, and when he glanced across the truck-bed Bucky was frowning. 

“Yeah,” he said, the tone of his voice hard to describe. “I got no clue.” 


End file.
